














* ^ 







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The National Dynamite Plot 




William J. Burns 



The man who secured the evidence to corroborate 
my confession 



The 

National Dynamite 
Plot 



BY ORTIE E. McMANIGAL 



Being the authentic account of the attempts of Union 
Labor to destroy the Structural Iron Industry 



THE NEALE COMPANY 
Lss Angeles Cal. 



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$v 



Copyright 1913 by William H. Durham. 
(All rights reserved.) 



0CI.A33 2 76 9 



FOREWORD 

It is with a feeling of hope that I send this book into the 
world. The book is written with a purpose. My life has 
been blighted by the shadow of the vicious labor union boss. 
I have spent two years of my existence in jail and I am not 
at liberty now. I spent four years of my life destroying 
property at the behest of the leaders of labor, so-called. 
Thus six years of my life are accounted for. And it was 
only a matter of eleven years ago that I joined a labor union. 
Only one conclusion is possible. Were it to do over again, 
in the light of my present knowledge, I would die rather 
than join a labor union, as labor unions are for the most 
part at present conducted. And I earnestly advise young 
men earning their living by their labor to study well the 
effect of unionism upon me before giving their allegiance 
to any organization w r hich has for its object those things for 
which most present-day unions actually stand, (whatever 
their pleas), that is to say, violence, disorder, criminality 
and destruction of life and property. 

There can be but one result to the nation from the unions 
as the most of them are administered today : Either the 
unions will wreck the government and lead directly to 
anarchy, or the government will wreck the unions, and in 
the disorder that will ensue on the one hand or the stern 
repressive measures which must be adopted on the other, 
the rights of the individual may be crushed along with the 



individual. Unionism properly organized and conducted, 
will result in great good to the nation, to the laborer and to 
the employer, but wrongly conducted, as my experience 
teaches me to believe, an overwhelming majority of labor 
unions are at present, it will destroy everything it touches 
precisely as fire destroys paper. 

I have no quarrel with any labor leader. The law has 
written "finis" to the activities of those with whom I was 
associated in a plot to destroy, and the law is supreme. 
But it has left me an industrial wreck upon the shores of 
human endeavor, and to me will be led scores of others to 
share my lot if the policies of destruction and the power 
of the labor bosses is allowed by the laboring men to go 
unchecked. It is not enough that the labor bosses shall 
obey the law ; members of the unions must make the bosses 
work for the union and not for themselves. If you are not 
willing to do your best to see that they do this, and to see 
that your fellow members also do their best to secure the 
same end, then in the name of God, don't join a labor 
union. 

This is the only edition of this work authorized by me. 

Los Angeles County Jail, 
Los Angeles, Cal., 
February 25, 1913. 



The National Dynamite Plot 

I am not yet 39 years old. I Avas born at Bloomville, 
Ohio, and when I was four years of age my mother died. I 
have a sister two years my junior. We were reared, chiefly, 
by my mother's father. He was a blacksmith. 

I left school in 1883, when I was ten years of age. Two 
years later I went to work in a stone quarry and for the 
next seven years I followed this work at Bloomville, being 
employed by E. H. France & Sons, and Kchler & Ge ; ger. 

While engaged at this work I learned the use of dynamite, 
an accidental training, which resulted years later in my 
selection by persons of whom I had had no previous knowl- 
edge, as an instrument of destruction and to light a fire 
of class hatred which, had it been allowed to run its course, 
would have resulted in disasters greater than I care to 
contemplate. 

When I was nineteen years old I went to Tiffin, Ohio, 
where my father had a stone quarry, and there worked for 
him. Later he closed the quarry and embarked in the ice 
business. For some time I drove a delivery wagon for him 
and at the outbreak of the Spanish-American war I enlisted 
in Company "E", Second Ohio Volunteers, and served 
eleven months, being mustered out at Macon, Ga., without 
having seen active service. I have an honorable discharge. 

After the war I went to Milwaukee, where I lived w r ith 
my uncle, George Behm, my mother's brother. He was 
a locomotive engineer, employed by the C. M. & St. P. It 



was he who called upon me at the Los Angeles county jail 
and tried so hard to have me repudiate my confession of 
guilt in the dynamite cases, though he knew that I was 
guilty. Had I done so, nothing but ill could have come of 
it for me as well as for my family. 

Upon my arrival in Milwaukee I secured work in a stone 
quarry, but some time later went to the Allis Chalmers 
shops in West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee, where the 
firm of Writer & Connelly were erecting steel work. This 
was my first experience in this kind of work. 

I was running a hoisting engine on this job which was 
an open one. There were many union men working, and 
agitation to organize the job was strong. In the spring of 
1902 I joined the hoisting engineers' union. The agitation 
for a closed shop was finally successful and in October the 
job was organized. This was my first acquaintance with 
union methods. They did not impress me greatly, but I 
joined, and paid my dues. It would have been inconven- 
ient, and probably dangerous, to say the least, to do 
otherwise. 

From West Allis I went with the same company back to 
Milwaukee to erect a plant for the gas company. While 
employed on this job I became a member of the Bridge & 
Structural Iron Workers' union, joining Local No. 8, Mil- 
waukee, and being given card No. 5063. I now had two 
union cards and, as it will be shown, this fact was another 
serious accident in my life, for it lead indirectly to the 
dynamite plot. 

After leaving Milwaukee I went to Chicago and there 
I married with Miss Emma Swantz. The wedding took 
place at Melrose Park, May 8, 1901. Of this union there are 
two children, a girl now aged nine years, and a boy who 
will soon be seven years of age. 

10 



It will be seen from the foregoing that during the years 
prior to the dynamite plot, which resulted in paralyzing 
every big construction plant in the country, frightening 
the little ones into unionizing their work and causing the 
deaths of over a score of men, I was a normal American 
citizen. I married young. I became a good workman and 
was never long without employment. I was sober and 
industrious and when later H. C. Hockin, international 
organizer of the B. & S. I. W., and J. J. McNamara, inter- 
national secretary of the same organization, put about my 
neck the rope that w r as ultimately to ensnare us all, my wife 
stood loyally by me, discountenancing the crimes but shield- 
ing me because I was her husband and the father of her 
children. This she did until we were caught. Then, thanks 
to the machinations of the union officials, she turned against 
me and joined my uncle, George Behm, in unsuccessfully 
"third degreeing" me in the Los Angeles county jail. I 
wish to say here that this was the only ill treatment I have 
received since my arrest. To no one else do I owe a harsh 
word. 

An ironworker's job is uncertain in point of duration. 
When the job upon which he is employed by the contractor 
is finished he must seek new work. Therefore it is fre- 
quently necessary for a man in my trade to travel from city 
to city seeking work. Such was my experience until I 
returned to Chicago in May, 1905. 

In Chicago I experienced a phase of unionism which I 
disliked. Heretofore union methods had meant little to me. 
I had seen the officers work for the union, as they expressed 
it. Frequently their "work" was brutal. They bullied men 
into joining the union and those who would not were almost 
certain to find themselves in frequent fist fights in which 

11 



the odds were against them to such extent that they had no 
chance to escape a beating. 

Now, however, I was to encounter the real thing in 
unionism — the union boss who sets his power above that 
of the government, his personal desire above the rights 
of the men he is directing, and his pique above justice. I 
witnessed a piece of work by F. M. Ryan, president of 
the I. A. of B. & S. I. W., recently convicted of com- 
plicity in the dynamite plot and who is now out on bail 
pending appeal. There will be many appearances of Mr. 
Ryan in these pages. 

Shortly after my arrival in Chicago I found myself out 
of work and applied to Oscar Daniels & Company for work 
as a bridgman or hoisting engineer, having cards in both 
organizations. I left my address care of William O'Brien, 
care Bridgmen's Hall, Chicago, and got a call from Dan- 
iels to go to South Bend, Ind., as a hoisting engineer. When 
I was told this by O'Brien I learned that Ryan, then busi- 
ness agent of the Chicago local, wanted to see me. 

I entered Ryan's office and he asked to see my bridg- 
man's card. I gave it to him and he found it correct, with 
dues paid in advance. 

"You carry an engineer's card also?" he said. 

I told him that I did, out of the Milwaukee local. He 
became angry and shouted that I should not have the job 
at South Bend. 

"You can't hold two cards," he declared. "The engineers 
are protesting against bridgmen running engines, and I'm 
going to stop it. You'll have to give up one card or the 
other." 

Here was the heated iron of unionism run wild and 
become anarchic, branding its victims with a vengeance. 
The very soul of unionism, as I had understood it, was the 

12 



holy right of a man to work. The leaders declared that 
they were elected to see that men had jobs. They denounced 
the employers who would not unionize their shops as 
despots who sought to deprive the workingman of his 
right to labor. I, who had two cards and no job, however, 
must not work. 

Of course, I could have thrown up the bridgemen's card 
and working under the engineer's card, taken the job. There 
were two reasons why I did not do this. One was that I 
would have incurred the enmity of F. M. Ryan and perhaps 
some day a bucket of red hot rivets or a ton or so of iron 
would have fallen onto my head from ten stories above. 
Then, too, the bridgeman's card gave me employment at 
better wages. 

The next place I secured employment was at the Illinois 
Steel Company's plant at South Chicago. My family was 
then residing at 414 South Sangamon street, Flat C-14, 
which apartments my wife and children are still occupying. 

It was on this job that I saw again the iron hand and 
ruthless heel of F. M. Ryan in their unmasked nakedness. 
It was the strike that Ryan called on this plant in the 
Spring of 1907. The strike is still in progress. 

There was no reason for that strike. There was no jus- 
tice in the order taking the men from their jobs and the 
men said so then and they said so as recently as two years 
ago, which is the last time I had definite information from 
the outside world. 

A word about this strike. 

Lacking a grievance, Ryan created a reason for the 
strike. The Illinois company that year refused to sign a 
contract. They had refused to do so every year. They 
had never signed one, and the contract had been for years 
presented to the company merely as a matter of form. 

- 13 



Every union man on the job was satisfied with conditions, 
pay and hours. The union was satisfied, but Ryan was 
not. And Ryan had the authority. He declared that unless 
the company signed he would call a strike. The company 
replied by pointing to its past record for fair dealing. The 
shop was manned exclusively by members of the union. 
None other could get a job. The company had been paying 
wage scale and hiring only union men. "Johnny" Jones, 
who had the confidence of both the company and the men, 
was yard superintendent, and the company agreed to let 
his word be supreme in the hiring of men. Ryan demanded 
a signed contract or a strike. The company refused to 
sign and declared that if the union went out it would 
stay out. Ryan called the strike and it is in progress yet. 
The union will never get into that shop again. 

So much for the justice and the effectiveness of Ryan's 
leadership. Ryan, however, is a man of iron. This made 
easy his rise to the berth of international president of the 
ironworkers, and at this writing he is out of jail on bail 
fighting for re-election to that office with a splendid chance 
of winning. 

When the Illinois strike was called, many of us in Chi- 
cago were forced out of work. With Freddy Zeiss, a friend, 
I secured a job in Detroit with the Oscar Daniels Company. 
Here begins my career as a dynamiter for the international. 

It will be seen from what has gone before that accident 
has had a great deal to do with my life. The accident of 
Ryan. It was a calamity. It seemed to have been fore- 
ordained, and before the storm I have bowed my head. 

The calamity started when Ryan took away my engin- 
eer's card. This prevented me leaving Chicago. Had I 
left it is probable I should have escaped the meshes of the 
plot which Ryan, McNamara and the others were even 

14 



then concocting. With the engineer's job gone I fell back 
upon the bridgemen's job and then Ryan took that from 
me by calling the strike. I left for Detroit and at Detroit 
Hockin was waiting for me. He had, doubtless, been 
posted by Ryan. At any rate, he knew of my knowledge of 
explosives and he demanded that knowledge in the service 
of the union ! And behind him I found Ryan the iron- 
handed, and McNamara and the others. And there was 
no escape this side of the grave. 

I do not say this in extenuation. Perhaps I should have 
chosen the grave. But life is the last thing man quits 
naturally and it is the thing he will hold to at the cost of 
everything else. The average man, I mean. And I am 
only an average man, with the average man's desire for 
life and pleasure, for the welfare of his wife and his chil- 
dren, for health and work and a home. These were staked 
against death and I chose to live. 

Unionism or a regard for unionism had but little to do 
with making up my mind to enter the dynamite plot. Hockin 
had all to do with it. It is to my shame that Hockin and 
Ryan and J. J. McNamara could get no other tool than me, 
save J. B. McNamara, to do the work in a satisfactory man- 
ner. But it is to the welfare of the country that this is the 
case, for had McNamara had all the men he wanted to carry 
out his plans of destruction there would have been more 
steel buildings in ruins in the United States than there are 
now standing. 

Zeiss and I arrived in Detroit on May 13, 1907, and went 
to work on the Ford building the following Monday. We 
were both on the derricks. Harry Anderson was foreman 
of my gang and Zeiss was under "Big Andy" Anderson. 
Axel Peterson was superintendent of construction, and a 
man named Tripps was timekeeper. 

15 



H. S. Hockin, since convicted of conspiracy in connection 
with the dynamite plot at Indianapolis, Ind., was at that 
time secretary of Detroit Local No. 25, Bridge & Structural 
Iron Workers' union. On three days of each week he was 
acting as business agent, the local not being strong enough 
to support a regular business agent for the full week. 

Detroit was then an open shop town and the v non-union 
men were in the majority. Naturally Hockin was provoked 
at this, for Hockin was ambitious. Hockin saw in the inter- 
national offices at Indianapolis a chance to shine as a na- 
tional labor leader and he set out to "do something" for 
the union that would result in his election as an international 
officer. 

Dynamite was to be his means and I was to be his tool. 

Hockin visited where I worked every day, usually at noon. 
The day after I went to work, he scraped an acquaintance 
with me, introducing himself. After that we conversed 
each day. He constantly complained about the "scab jobs" 
in town, and painted bright hopes for the future. 

Early in June one of the men on the job, I never knew 
his name and had never spoken to him, asked me if I was 
going to attend the regular meeting of the union, to be held 
that night. It was not my custom to go to the meetings, 
but because this man told me something unusual was to 
take place I went. I thought that this unusual event was 
the election of delegates to the International convention 
of Bridge & Structural Iron Workers. This convention 
was scheduled for New Orleans, but was later changed to 
Indianapolis. Hockin was elected as one of the delegates.. 

For me this was not the unusual event, however. This 
was the fatal night of my life — the turning point. Hockin 
got me. 

Before the meeting ended the same man who had induced 

16 



me to attend, told me that after the regular meeting the 
executive board of the local would hold a meeting and that 
the members of the board wanted to see me. 

At this meeting Hockin and two other members were 
present. I asked what was wanted of me. Hockin replied 
at length. He said the board was desirous of unionizing 
several Detroit jobs then operating under the open shop 
method. He explained at some length the operations of 
several "entertaining committees ,, he had sent out, but de- 
clared their efforts had resulted in no good to the union. I 
should explain here that the duty of those committees was 
to lure non-union men away from their jobs and brutally 
assault them. There was nothing said about not killing 
them, in fact. It was a means of coercion on the part of 
the union, to organize the non-union men, but it did not 
work well among bridgemen, who are pretty used to hard 
knocks. Hockin concluded his explanation with the state- 
ment that he had to do something. 

This was true. He had to do something or lose his job. 
There was a great deal of dissatisfaction among union men 
over the country at conditions in Detroit at that time. This 
feeling had its center in Chicago, where members of the 
union had been taxed $1 per month for two consecutive 
months to aid the Detroit local in its fight against the 
open shop. This had led to expressions of disgust, although 
men in Detroit were paying fifty cents a week for this 
purpose. So great was the feeling that the Detroit union 
had threatened to issue transfer cards to all Chicago men 
working in Detroit, and forbid them to work there. This 
method of "aiding" a union man is not an unusual pro- 
ceeding, of course, and when such conditions arise, news 
of them leak to the outside and assist in keeping level- 
headed men out of labor unions. This the labor leader 

17 



realizes. This Hockin had realized to such extent that he 
was desperate. And in that desperation lay the germ of 
a plot which, had it been allowed to run as far as the men 
at its head would have run it, would, in my opinion, have 
destroyed the government and created a true condition 
of chaos and anarchy. Nor have the unions been purged 
of the idea yet, although the same executives are no longer 
at hand to carry on the work. 

I asked Hockin what there was that I could do. I was 
only a member of the union, you see, a man who took but 
little interest in its affairs, although I lived up to the rules 
at all times. I did not see where I could be of service to 
the local. 

"J am told you know how to handle dynamite/' replied 
Hockin. 

This startled me. A number of explosions had occurred 
in various parts of the country and I had heard the union 
blamed for them. But I took no interest in the stories and 
no stock in the tales. I did not realize then that the open 
shop was a serious menace to unionism or, what is more 
important, that unionism as conducted by most lead- 
ers of the movement in the United States is today a serious 
menace, not only to the existing government, with its glor- 
ious and patriotic traditions, but a menace to all government 
and all liberty of the individual or even of the masses. 

"I want you to use the dynamite which I am going to 
procure as I direct you to use it," said Hockin. "I'm going 
to show these fellows just what the union is. I want this 
job the Russell Wheel Foundry Company is putting up for 
the Detroit Gas Company, blown up." 

This staggered me. I looked at the three men and even 
at that stage I felt that I was a cornered rat. These 
men had the power to take the bread and butter from the 

18 



mouths of my children and I knew it. I wondered if they 
would think of that. They did. 

"Why did you choose me?" I asked. 

"Every other Chicago man has done something for us, 
on the entertaining committees or in some other way," I 
was told. "It's up to you to do your part." 

"I'll see you at the job tomorrow," said Hockin when I 
replied that I would think the matter over. I left the hall 
in a cold sweat and that night I slept little. In the morn- 
ing I had come to no decision, and he who hesitates is lost. 

At noon Hockin came to the job and asked me when I 
would do the work. He took it for granted that I would 
do it. I asked him what I had to expect if I got caught. 

"Stand pat and keep your mouth shut," he said. "I'll 
get a lawyer and the money for your defense and bail, and 
we'll get you out of it." 

"Fm afraid of a leak," I objected, seeking desperately to 
find a way out. But there was no way. And to convince 
me that there was no danger of a leak, Hockin stooped to 
dragging in the mire the badge of brotherhood which we 
both wore, and in which I have always taken too much 
pride to ever use in such trouble as has befallen me. 

"We're both Knights of Pythias," Hockin replied, "and 
you ought to be willing to trust a brother. Everything will 
be all right. You will be well paid. There will be no risk. 
You get ready and I'll get the dynamite and let you know 
when I'm ready." 

This was not dark alley plotting and there was none 
of the dramatic about it. That was to enter later, with the 
appearance of J. J. McNamara. This conversation was held 
on a Detroit street at the noon hour, and I flatly told Hockin 
that I would not do the work. 

"Then I'll take away your card and have you blacklisted," 

19 



he snarled. "I'll keep you off of every union job in the 
country, and I'll spread the report that you were fired from 
the union because you dynamited those other jobs and 
the union won't stand for dynamiters. Of course, they can't 
prove it on you, but you'll be arrested and put to all sorts 
of trouble and the open shop people will have nothing to 
do with you. And I'll brand you so no decent man will 
work beside you in any kind of work." 

Hindsight is a splendid quality, but how fine it would be 
if we could reverse its action. I see now a number of 
things which I might have done then and escaped. But I 
could not see them then. I could only see my wife and 
children hungry and myself tramping about the country, 
vainly hunting work or, finding it, holding it only for a 
day or so, to be kicked out as a degenerated thug with the 
instincts of a tiger. Seeing this and only this, I yielded. 
But I promised myself that, the job once accomplished, I 
would leave Detroit, get away from Hockin and thus es- 
cape being mired with him in the pit he was digging for 
himself. For it was easy to see that he had become ob- 
sessed with the idea of explosion and that, should I per- 
form the work in a manner to accomplish real damage, and 
escape without suspicion, he would carry into effect a pro- 
gram of destruction which would find an echo in every 
part of the country. I foresaw exactly what did happen, 
and I tried to escape a part in it. Why I could not will 
appear shortly. 

A few days later Hockin told me that he had been un- 
able to get the dynamite and said I would have to get it. 
I never knew, but it is easy to guess, that Hockin decided 
that so long as I was doing the work I might as well do 
all of it, and thus he would keep his hands free of stain in 
case I was caught. 

20 



I put him off from day to day, asking him where I was 
to get the dynamite. This puzzled him for awhile, but on 
June 22, 1907, he told me to go to the quarry in Bloom- 
ville, Ohio, where I used to work, and buy thirty-five 
pounds. I never knew what trouble Hockin took looking 
into my early life, but he knew it in detail. 

I asked him how I was to transport the dynamite. 

"Put it in a suit case and take it with you on a passenger 
train," he said. 

This conversation was held on Saturday, June 22, 1907, 
and I left Detroit that evening, Hockin giving me $20 for 
expenses. I arrived in Bloomville a few hours later, and 
from my cousin, Philip E. Prouse, who conducted a hard- 
ware store, bought the fuse and caps. I then secured an 
order from Nat France, owner of the quarry for thirty-five 
pounds of dynamite. My uncle, William Behm, drove me to 
the quarry and William Carey, in charge of the magazine, 
delivered the dynamite to me. The use of dynamite is 
so common in that section that nothing is thought of its 
sale, although I told France I wanted it to kill fish with. 
I told my uncle the truth. 

With the dynamite in a suit case I left Bloomville that 
afternoon and arrived in Detroit that evening. On Mon- 
day, June 24, 1907, I went to the job as usual, leaving the 
explosive in my room, which I shared with Fred Zeiss, 
and at noon Hockin came to me. I reported to him and 
tendered the balance of the expense money he had given 
me. He told me to keep it. In the light of later experi- 
ence, this generosity on his part is inexplicable, except 
upon the theory that he was excited. He got it back from 
me over and over again. 

I again told him that I had gone as far as I intended 
to in the matter and that he must send a man to my room 

21 



that night to get the dynamite. He said that he would see 
me again as I came off the job in the afternoon. 

As I was leaving the work he accosted me and said : 

"I want that job pulled off tonight and you've got to do 
it. Set some in the boiler, under the hoist and some in the 
air compressor. There is no watchman and you'll have 
no trouble. I'm janitor of the Elks' Club and they have 
a banquet tonight. The banquet will be over at 1 o'clock 
in the morning and I'll be busy then. Set the explosion 
between 1 and 2 o'clock. That will give me a good alibi. 
Your money will come in a day or two. If you are caught, 
stand pat." 

I had no trouble in executing his orders, but as I set the 
explosion in the boiler I noticed a little door which led 
from the kitchen of a restaurant into the alley, just oppo- 
site the boiler. I was afraid that some person would come 
out of that door just as the explosion went off, so I rolled 
a garbage barrel in front of it, arranging the barrel so that 
the door could not be opened from the inside. Then I led 
the fuses to one point, each cut for thirty-five minutes, 
and lighted them. I then went to my room, four blocks 
.away and was in bed when the explosion occurred. 

This dynamite was 60 per cent nitro-glycerine and I had 
set four sticks in each charge, leaving the remainder in my 
room. The explosion did a great deal of damage and was 
in every way what Hockin termed "a good job." 

I heard the fire department's apparatus answer an alarm 
that was turned in because of the explosion and later in 
the morning heard the newsboys calling their papers with 
the story of the explosion. I looked out at the window and 
saw a policeman at each corner of the block. I was cer- 
tain that I had been detected and that the house was sur- 
rounded. Because of this I cut the fuse and dynamite into 

22 



small bits and flushed them down the toilet. The caps I 
took with me and hid in the building on which I was work- 
ing. 

On our way to work Zeiss and I heard talk of the ex- 
plosion on all sides and he wanted to go to the place and 
see the wreck. I was afraid to do this. I had told him 
nothing of my connection with it but now said, as though 
joking: 

"I'll tell you all about it later." He merely laughed. 

During all that day I worked with a vacant mind. I 
could not collect my ideas and thought continually of the 
crime I had committed. A number of strangers were pry- 
ing about the building all day and I suspected them to be 
detectives. I learned later that they were such. The day 
seemed a hundred hours long, but it ended at last, and 
taking the caps I had hid I threw them, one at a time, into 
the Detroit river. Thus all of the evidence save what they 
may have found at the scene of the explosion was de- 
stroyed. 

I read every paper, and learned that Hockin had been 
arrested. He was released shortly afterward, his alibi be- 
ing too strong to shake. It will be remembered that I 
had told my uncle, William Behm, the truth about the use 
to which the dynamite was to be put. I sent the news- 
papers to him and he destroyed them. 

I now sought an opportunity to leave Detroit and thus 
get away from Hockin, whom I feared. Therefore, when 
word came that men were wanted on a rush job at Indian- 
apolis, I persuaded Zeiss to accompany me there. The 
general contractor w r as the Central States Bridge Company 
and a sub-contractor was doing the iron work. 

On June 27 or 28, after lunch, I was ascending the build- 
ing when I heard a man on the ladder behind me ask why 

23 



I hurried so. At the eighth floor he said : "Wait a minute, " 
and joined me. He gave me a sealed envelope and said: 

"There's some money in it." 

It contained $75 in bills and a note in Hockin's writing 
which said: "Compliments of the executive board. More 
to follow." 

On Saturday, June 29, Hockin visited the work and 
asked me if I got the money. I then asked him for transfer 
cards for Zeiss and myself and told him we were going to 
Indianapolis. We got them and left that (evening for 
Chicago. On July 1 we arrived in Indianapolis, only to 
be told the contractors had been changed and the job was 
an open shop. We met a friend of Zeiss' who took us up 
to the international headquarters of the Iron Workers' 
Union and there I again saw Ryan, now international pres- 
ident, and became acquainted with J. J. McNamara, then 
international secretary and treasurer. The offices were in 
the American Central Life building, rooms Nos. 422-24. 
On the fifth floor of the building there is a big vault which 
also belonged to the headquarters. 

I suggested to Ryan that in as much as we had come in 
response to a wire from him for men it was only fair that 
headquarters should pay our fare to Indianapolis and back 
to Chicago. He became angry in an instant and pointing 
to a big safe he said: 

"We ought to have that full of money for legitimate work 
let alone paying the expenses of men looking for jobs." 

Zeiss and I returned to Chicago and on July 5 went to 
work for Charles Volkmann & Co., and during the next 
few months we had several jobs together. Then, in Sep- 
tember, Zeiss had a bad fall, sustaining serious injuries. 
He went to a hospital and I have not seen him since. 

It was not until December that I again felt the iron hand 

24 



of the union and the fine hand of Ryan and Hockin, the 
latter now international organizer. During that month, in 
the absence of an engineer, I ran a hoisting engine for two 
hours and was fined $25. I was foreman for Volkmann 
then and refused to pay the fine. In order to keep me on 
the job Volkmann paid it for me. Again appears an acci- 
dent of fate. Had Volkmann not paid that fine I would 
have been expelled from the union and escaped the meshes 
of the union leaders so far as the dynamite plot was con- 
cerned. I was angry about the fine but there lurked in 
my mind the idea that if I was expelled I would certainly 
be done with the dynamite game. But the fine was paid 
and I worked on. And early in February I heard from 
Hockin. Truly, there was no escape for me. 

It was at that time that Paddy Mackin, then business 
agent for the Chicago local, came to me and told me that 
Hockin wanted to see me and would be waiting for me 
that evening near my home. He and Mackin were both 
there. We went to a wine room, where he told me that 
he wanted me to dynamite a bridge in course of construc- 
tion by the Wisconsin Bridge Company at Clinton, Iowa. 
He said that the watchman was "fixed" and that I was 
expected by the international executive board to put a 
charge of dynamite under the derrick car used in the con- 
struction of the bridge. 

I told him that I was done with that sort of thing. I 
said that I was sorry for the Detroit crime. It bothered 
me and I feared arrest. 

"We've got the goods on you now," he replied. "You've 
got to do as we say or we'll jail you. Then where will 
your wife and children be? You can't lay down on us 
now. The executive board has set aside $125 and expenses 
for this job and for other jobs that you're going to do. 

25 



You're going to do just exactly as we say, when we say 
it, and as often as we say it, or you are going to jail. 91 

I was afraid to refuse but I told him that the money 
he offered was not enough and he told me that it was all 
I would get. 

A week later he called at my house to discuss plans and 
was introduced to my wife as Mr. Ping. When I objected 
that I had no dynamite he told me to get it where I got 
the other. 

"Get a hundred pounds," he said, "and you can use it 
in the other jobs you'll get. If you are arrested, stand pat 
and I'll protect you." 

He gave me $50 for expenses and I left for Tiffin, Ohio, 
on February 13, 1908. I drove from there to Bloomville in 
a livery rig, putting the rig in the stable of Frank Rutz, 
and spent the night with my uncle, William Behm. My 
cousin, Philip E. Prouse, had sold his hardware business 
but I bought caps and fuse from his successor and on the 
afternoon of February 14 got 100 pounds of dynamite from 
Nat France's magazine. I arrived in Chicago on the morn- 
ing of February 15. I left there at noon and arrived at 
Clinton between 4 and 5 o'clock. I registered at a hotel 
as G. Grovie, according to Hockin's instructions, and in 
the evening looked over the work I had to do. The next 
day, Sunday, I again inspected the bridge and the work, 
and found that I would have to pay toll on a bridge in 
order to get across the river to the derrick car I was ex- 
pected to destroy. 

On Sunday night it was biting cold. I took the dyna- 
mite and went across the river. Waiting until 1 o'clock I 
set a charge of fifteen sticks on each side of the hoist and 
twenty sticks under the car. The work was not successful 
from Hockin's point of view. Only one charge on the hoist 

26 



exploded. The dynamite was frozen and I had no way to 
thaw it before use. 

I did not want to face the toll man on the bridge so 
soon after having crossed, so I walked four miles up the 
river to another bridge, crossed there, returned to Clinton, 
got a train at 4 o'clock and arrived in Chicago at 9 a. m., 
February 17. In the afternoon I returned to my job as 
foreman. 

A week later Hockin came to my house and learning 
that my expenses had been $40 said he would leave that 
and the $125 pay with R. H. Houlihan, recently convicted 
for complicity in the dynamite plot at the Indianapolis 
trial, and at that time secretary of the bridgemen's Chicago 
union. On the following Tuesday I went to the union 
hall because it was meeting night, thus giving me an ex- 
cuse. 

"A friend of yours named Ping left some money for you, ,, 
said Houlihan, inviting me into his private office. "Why 
does he owe you this?" 

"I might have loaned it to him," I replied and Houlihan 
laughed. 

"That's a good excuse," he said. There was an order 
prohibiting any member of the union from entering the 
private office, but from that day forward I was always wel- 
come in the place. Houlihan knew then what I was doing. 

Having no interest in the meeting I did not remain, but 
went home and gave the money to my wife. 

I again began to think how I could evade Hockin and 
still work at my trade. Before I had reached a conclusion 
Volkmann got a contract at Howell, Indiana, to tear down 
a steel building and re-erect it at Evansville, near by. I 
thought then that my problem was solved. I did not be- 
lieve that Hockin would locate me there. I had not yet 

27 



realized the extent of the determination of the interna- 
tional executive board and Ryan and McNamara to have 
the dynamiting done. If I had I would never have de- 
ceived myself into thinking I could work as a union man 
and hide anywhere in the world. I had been in Evansville 
only two days when Hockin hailed me from across the 
street. 

"I never was so glad to see a man in my life as I am 
you," he said. He was excited and showed it. I ques- 
tioned him as to the cause and he said: 

"A man carrying a suit case filled with dynamite was 
arrested in Clinton, Iowa, the other day and we thought 
it was you. I must telegraph international headquarters 
that you are safe." 

Less than a week later Hockin came there again and 
wanted me to leave the job and go to St. Louis to dyna- 
mite a viaduct. I told him that it was impossible for me 
to get away from the job as it was a rush order and I was 
in charge, with Volkmann depending upon me. He said 
that he would arrange to have me receive a telegram from 
Chicago saying that my aunt was sick and to have me 
met by a man at Union station, St. Louis, who would 
give me a note telling location of the work to be destroyed, 
and of the dynamite. 

Before I got the wire I got hurt and could not walk for 
a day or two. The day I got the wire he telephoned to me 
and I told him of my accident. This time the accident 
worked in my favor but it was the only time. A week 
later he came to Evansville and told me they had got an- 
other man to blow the St. Louis work but that it had been 
a failure. 

The end of the Evansville work was the end of my peace 
of mind. From that day to this the union has kept me in 

28 



mental torment. I cannot here make this part of my nar- 
rative too strong. I hope by this little book to be the 
means of saving others similarly placed. Hockin and the 
international executive board now had me bound hand 
and foot. I had become their slave. I gave a lot of thought 
to the subject. I pondered ways of escaping them. I dis- 
cussed the matter with my wife. I could see no end save 
jail or perhaps, should I even unintentionally kill some 
one, a worse fate. But men with strong wills dominated 
me and events proved that there was to be no escape. I 
had to go on and on to the end, and all because I had first 
let Hockin threaten me into doing the Detroit work by 
painting a picture of want for my family, and later black- 
mail me into doing his bidding by threatening me with 
exposure and punishment for the same crime. Now it was 
too late to turn back, unless I could go to some one in 
whom I could place confidence and tell him everything. 
And I knew no such person. There was to be no looking 
back now, if Hockin insisted. 

When the work at Evansville was finished I returned 
to Chicago and had been there but a few days when Hockin 
demanded that I go to Buffalo, N. Y., and destroy some 
girder spans in a bridge which the McClintock & Marshall 
Company was constructing for the Lehigh railroad. 

On June 28, 1908, I left Chicago for Buffalo, taking with 
me what dynamite I had left. This I had buried in a vacant 
lot near my house. I arrived in Buffalo the following day 
and registered at the Arlington hotel as Charles Clark. 
In the evening while walking near Lafayette Park I spied 
Hockin talking with a policeman. A drizzle was falling 
but we went out to the bridge and looked it over. We 
did not see enough to satisfy us, though, so returned the 
next day. Hockin then said he wanted the bridge dyna- 

29 



mited on the following night and that he would go to To- 
ronto and wait. We stood on a foot bridge near the rail- 
road bridge and he pointed out just where he wanted the 
charge set. It was on top of a concrete pier, in the shoe 
at the end of two girders. 

In the evening of July 1, I took the dynamite from the 
check room of the Union station, where I had placed it on 
my arrival, and hid it and my automatic pistol near a board 
fence some distance from the bridge. I climbed upon a 
box car to see if I could get onto the pier that way. The 
structure was for carrying trains over other tracks, of 
which there were many under the bridge. As I stood on 
the box car two men in the yards called to me. I went 
down and they questioned me. I was practically under 
arrest. I told them I was the watchman on the bridge. 

"You'd better get back on the bridge, then," they said. 
"You're in a bad place here. A watchman was killed 
among these cars a day or so ago." 

They went away and I got my gun and the dynamite. 
A switch engine left a car directly under the bridge and 
by this means I reached the top of the pier. I set the 
charge and cut the fuse to reach the ground. 

In all of my crimes of this character I never failed to 
consider the getaway. This time I was a bit confused by 
the difference in time between Buffalo and Chicago. For- 
tunately, however, the mistake was in my favor and I only 
had to wait a little longer than I had reckoned on. I fired 
the fuse and was at the Union station when I heard the 
explosion. I got the train and arrived in Chicago on the 
evening of July 2. A few days later Hockin came to Chi- 
cago and paid me $125 and my expenses for the work. 

A day or so later I went to work on the construction of 
the La Salle hotel, George A. Fuller Company, contractors. 

30 



Johnny Hunter was superintendent and George "Nigger" 
Brown foreman of the derrick gang in which I worked. 
I remained at peace there until October, when Hockin 
came and told me I must go to Holyoke, Mass., where the 
Shoemaker Company was erecting an over-street bridge 
for the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad. 

"I want you to get the big guy derrick they're using, and 
the material, " said Hockin. 

By this time I had run out of excuses and had also lost 
hope that any excuse I could give would have effect. But 
as a forlorn hope I told him I had that job for all winter 
and did not want to quit. His answer was ready. 

"I'll fix it with Hunter so you can get away for the 
trip and go back to work when you come home." He did 
this. Not a word was said when I returned to work, 
though if I had disappeared from the job because of ill- 
ness or for some other serious and honest reason I should 
probably have had no job when I returned. But the job 
was a union one and Hockin was international organizer. 
That was reason enough. I don't know what Hockin told 
Hunter. Nothing was ever said to me about it. 

I don't remember where I got the dynamite for that 
job. I have spent two years trying to recall its source, 
but to no purpose. I had it buried in the vacant lot at 
Van Buren and Sangamon streets, near my home, and 
when I dug it up and got ready for the trip I saw that it 
was weather-beaten and I believe now it was so old that 
it would not have exploded had the cap been fired. I ar- 
rived in Springfield, Mass., on October 14 and located the 
bridge in Holyoke that day. On the next day I took the 
dynamite to Holyoke and placed it, in the suit case, in the 
base of a column. Then I returned to Springfield after 
lighting the fuse. The next day I saw in a newspaper an 

31 



account of an attempt to dynamite the bridge. Watchmen 
whom I had seen at a fire near the derrick in which I was 
to have set the charge had seen the smoke from the fuse, 
investigated and prevented the explosion. I don't believe, 
though, that that dynamite would have gone off if it had 
been let alone for it was in bad condition. 

This is not to be considered a reflection on the bravery 
of those watchmen who prevented the explosion of the 
cap. They did not know the condition and they risked 
their lives to undo the crime I had committed, and the 
dynamite might have exploded. But however it is looked 
at, the lives of three men were thus put in jeopardy be- 
cause Hockin and the international executive board of the 
Bridge and Structural Iron Workers sought to punish a 
company which preferred to deal with men direct instead 
of through organizations. These lives were jeopardized, 
too, through no fault of mine, save in the degree in which 
I was responsible for my own act in placing the charge. 
This incident taught me that however careful I might be, 
I could not tell when an act of mine was going to lead to 
murder, and this added to the burden of worry the increas- 
ing number of crimes was placing on me. 

I returned to my job on the La Salle hotel and later 
Hockin asked me why there had been no explosion. I 
showed him the clipping and he said the executive board 
would not pay for the job, but would pay my expenses. 

Shortly after this I left the La Salle job to go with 
Volkmann as foreman on several small jobs and in March, 
1909, was at Lockport, 111., when Hockin hunted me up. . 

No town was too small for him to find if I were in it. If 
ever a man had an evil genius, I had one in Hockin. 

Before Hockin arrived, however, I had another caller 
on a similar errand. Jim Cooney, then business agent at 

32 



Chicago, wanted me to do some dynamiting for him. The 
leak of which I had spoken to Hockin in Detroit had been 
developed. Hockin must have talked, lodge brother though 
he was. I bluffed Cooney off by telling him that I could 
do work only for the international executive board. There 
was no use in denying to him that I did dynamiting for 
he convinced me in three words that he knew. It fright- 
ened me, but my refusal did not even annoy Cooney. He 
said that he would have to re-employ some safe blowers 
he had used before. These men, I learned, were engaged 
in some dynamiting in the name of unionism around Chi- 
cago, but I know nothing of them or their work. 

Late in March Hockin returned to Chicago and told me 
to go to Boston and find Mike J. Young, business agent 
of the Boston local, at the Labor Temple, 386 Harrison 
avenue. I was to tell Young that my name was Clark and 
that I had been sent by Ping. He would then give me 
instructions. 

After I had finished the work in Boston, Hockin said 
I was to go to New York and visit Frank C. Webb, a mem- 
ber of the international executive board, at his home on 
One Hundred and Twenty-third street near Third avenue. 
I was to use the same names and give the same account 
of myself and Webb would give me instructions concern- 
ing the dynamiting he wanted done. This was aimed at 
a structure in Hoboken, N. J. I told Hockin I had no dyna- 
mite and he said : 

"Go to Joliet and buy it." He advanced me $50 and I 
bought two cases of 40 per cent dynamite of twenty-five 
pounds each. With this in two suit cases I left Chicago 
on March 26 and arrived in Boston the following day. 
Leaving the suit cases at the depot parcel room I hunted 
up Young and we rode on a street car to the Boston opera 

33 



house, then in course of construction. He told me that 
that was the job he wanted dynamited. Four derricks were 
employed on the work and after looking it over I told 
Young I did not believe I could do much damage. He 
was determined to have the explosion and told me to set 
the charge under a big girder over the stage. At 3 o'clock 
in the morning we turned in. I told Young on leaving 
him that I thought I could set the shot that night. He 
told me that he had sent $50 to Webb in New York, think- 
ing that I would stop there first. He said that this had 
been done because he wanted me to be sure to visit Boston. 

In view of the overwhelming evidence brought against 
Young and Webb, as well as the others, at the trial of the 
dynamite plot cases in Indianapolis recently, this fact of 
the money is not especially important. I insert it here, 
however, to show the determination of these men to de- 
stroy property and the eagerness with which they awaited 
my coming to do their work. It was at this juncture that 
the work of dynamiting surpassed in importance, as the 
labor leaders saw it, any other work they could do. From 
this time forward, as will be shown, it was the sole idea 
of the international executive board to destroy. Destruc- 
tion was, of course, limited to non-union work, but the de- 
sire to unionize work was secondary to the desire to de- 
stroy property, and so far as I was able to judge, none of 
the leaders cared whether the destruction of property en- 
tailed with it the destruction of life. 

McNamara and the others claimed that they were wag- 
ing a war. In a sense they were. I mean that they really 
thought they were making real war. But it was a diseased 
thought in diseased brains, lacking justification and with- 
out benefit to any person in the world. 

On the night of March 27 I set a suit case containing 

34 



twenty-five pounds of dynamite in a stair wall on 'the sec- 
ond floor of the opera house and cut a fuse to burn thirty- 
five minutes. Then I went to the depot intending to catch 
a train, but was delayed and missed it. I was at the depot 
when the explosion went ofif. I registered as Charles Clark 
at the United States hotel and the next morning went to 
New York and found Webb at his home. I checked the 
suit case with the dynamite at a railroad station at Forty- 
third street and Lexington avenue and Webb and I went 
by the Twenty-third street ferry to Jersey City. There he 
showed me a big bridge which the Penn Steel Company 
was erecting and said he wanted it destroyed. I refused 
to do this, for Hockin had told me the job I was after was 
in Hoboken. The next morning we went to Hoboken and 
en route there he gave me the money Young had sent. 

At Hoboken I found that the work to be destroyed was 
an inclined viaduct for a street car company. It was be- 
ing erecte^ by McClintock & Marshall. About the work 
were a dozen or more of watchmen's shanties and I saw 
that it would be difficult to do my work undetected. Webb 
went so far as to point out a spot between the air com- 
pressor and boiler, saying that was where he wanted the 
blast placed. I told him I would have to set it where I 
could. 

We returned to New York and after getting my suit case 
I bade Webb good-bye. As we were about to separate 
Webb urged me to remain in New York and work for the 
local, but Hockin's orders to me had included a declaration 
that I was to take work of this kind only through the in- 
ternational executive board. I found out later why that 
was. 

I arrived in Hoboken at dusk and after some skirmishing 
got onto the bridge and determined to set the charge on a 

35 



pierhead about midway of the bridge. A column set on 
this pier and the steel lacings were so close together that 
I had to push the dynamite through one stick at a time. 
This required some time, during which half a dozen watch- 
men passed within a few feet of me. I cut fifty feet of 
fuse, lighted it and was at the ferry depot when the ex- 
plosion took place. A policeman in the ferry house ran 
out when the shot came. There was considerable excite- 
ment and a report was circulated that the gas plant, which 
was near the viaduct, had blown up. 

As yet I knew nothing of the damage I had done, but I 
was too nervous to stay near that ferry. A car was leaving 
and I got on it without knowing its destination. It landed 
me at Jersey City at 4 o'clock in the morning of March 31. 

Herein appears a peculiar coincidence which in a meas- 
ure enabled me to escape. While in New York with Webb 
I had bought a ticket to Chicago by the Pennsylvania road 
and had asked about trains which would take me by the 
famous Horseshoe curve in daylight. They told me that 
that train left Jersey City at 5 a. m. The street car I had 
taken blindly had enabled me to connect with the train I 
wanted. 

Hockin was so anxious to know the result of my work 
that he found it impossible to wait for my arrival to get the 
news. Accordingly he frequently gave me orders to tele- 
graph him results. On this occasion I was to use the name 
"Ping" and wire "Sold Stock Boston (with date), Hoboken, 
(with date)." This wire I sent from Pittsburg on the night 
of March 31 and the original telegram in my handwriting, 
was put in evidence at the Indianapolis trial, together with 
the testimony of the girl who took it from me. 

At Mansfield, O., I left the train and went to Bloomville 
for a short stay, then going to Chicago, arriving there Sat- 

36 



urday, April 3, 1909. A few days later I got a telegram 
from Hockin at Detroit, asking me to meet him at the Mich- 
igan Central depot at Chicago the next day. He arrived 
with a woman whom he said was his sister. She was en 
route to Pasadena, Cal. He paid me for the two crimes, 
but deducted the $50 which Young had sent to Webb for 
me. I protested at this, saying that I was under the impres- 
sion the money had been a present from Young. Hockin 
became angry and said I had no right to take money from 
anyone save the international, through him. Again he 
threatened me with exposure or blacklisting and again I 
knuckled to him. I feared that he had me hopelessly in his 
power and decided to let the money go. 

During the next ten days I was idle. This gave me much 
time to think over what I had done, and the more I thought 
the more despondent I became. I talked it over w r ith my 
wife and told her I would give anything for a friend in 
whom I could confide. I said that the strain was killing 
me and that sooner or later I would get caught or killed. 
She asked me if it was that serious and I explained the 
details of one or two of my crimes to her. She then told 
me to quit, but she could not tell me how I was to quit. If 
I had known anyone who would have given me protection 
I would have hunted him up and confessed then and there 
and thus stopped the whole thing and prevented the murder 
of those twenty men in the Los Angeles Times building. 
But I could do nothing, or, at any rate, I did not see then 
that I could do anything. 

No man who ever lived wanted to reform as I wanted to. 
But everywhere I turned I found a union boss leering at 
me. By this time business agents and other labor leaders 
throughout the country were familiar with what was going 
on. I had seen proof of this in Young and Webb. I knew, 

37 



therefore, that should I refuse to do their work and try to 
hide I would be instantly turned over to the police. By 
doing this the labor leaders could have made great capital, 
as they would have thus been able to show their sincerity 
in denouncing violence. They could have convicted me as 
the dynamiter and the public would have praised them 
for succeeding where the great private detectives and the 
police had failed. 

On April 15 I went to Evanston, 111., to work for Volk- 
mann, who was constructing a bridge over the sanitary 
drainage canal for the C. M. & St. P. railroad. In June 
Hockin came for me. 

Had a beam fallen on him by accident I suppose I should 
have been morally responsible, for that was just what I 
was wishing would happen when I saw him. But no acci- 
dent took place, and he told me he had several pieces of 
dynamite work for me. 

I threatened and pleaded with him to let me alone. I told 
him I wanted no more of his work and that I would not 
break my contract with Volkmann. He merely laughed 
at me and that added to my fury. 

He told me at that time of the invention by one of the 
union men of a clockwork device by which an explosion 
could be set at any hour to take place at any time within 
tw r elve hours. This, he said, gave the man ample time to 
get hundreds of miles away from the scene before the ex- 
plosion occurred. This was the celebrated clock machine 
which J. B. McNamara used in destroying the Los Angeles 
Times building and killing twenty men working there. Both 
J. B. and I used these machines exclusively after their 
invention. 

The clock used was a small Tattoo alarm, from which 
the alarm clapper and the silencer was removed. To the 

38 



winding key of the alarm was soldered a small L-shaped 
piece of brass. The clock was attached to a light board 
or cardboard. To this board was also affixed a dry bat- 
tery. To one battery post was connected a wire to the 
other end of which was soldered a small piece of brass and 
this was also attached to the board in such a manner that 
wmen the alarm key unwound as the alarm went off, the 
brass soldered to the key came in contact with the brass 
fixed to the wire, thus making a circuit. The other post 
of the battery was occupied by a wire from the fulminat- 
ing cap. The other cap wire was wound around the ring 
of the clock. 

"We've also got the pure quill now," continued Hockin, 
"nitro-glycerine. We bought some from a well-shooter in 
Indianapolis and tried it and the clock out on some material 
stored on a siding at Steubenville, O. It worked fine. We 
set six explosions and five of them went off. We'll have 
no more smoke from fuses to attract attention now." 

The hellishness of Hockin's schemes are perhaps made 
more apparent by a proposal he made to me with regard 
to the work we were on, which was unionized. We were 
setting the concrete piers, and Volkmann, while bidding on 
the steel work, had lost the job to the Wisconsin Bridge 
Company, a non-union outfit, whose bridge at Clinton, la., 
I had damaged in my second explosion. Hockin wanted 
to send out some of the "soup," as he, like a yeggman, 
referred to nitroglycerine, and I was to set it within the 
pier so that we would have a charge all ready when the steel 
work got far enough advanced to make it worth our while 
to destroy. 

I promptly told him that I would go to jail right then 
rather than be a party to such a scheme; that the nitro 
was almost certain to explode as the workmen set the steel 

39 



and that thus any number of men might be killed or injured. 
This time I convinced him I meant business, and he dropped 
the subject. 

We finished the job on July 15, 1909, and before we got 
through the Wisconsin Bridge Company moved in its tools. 
Among these was the derrick car which I had damaged in 
the Clinton, la., explosion. I was shown where the unex- 
ploded (frozen) dynamite was found, and told that the 
explosion blew the engine to pieces. 

Much has been and is still being said about the efforts 
made by the International executive board of the bridge- 
men's union to stop the explosions and arrest the dynamiters 
of that period. It is doubtless a fact, despite all the evidence 
that has been brought forward, that thousands upon thou- 
sands of labor union men throughout the country still be- 
lieve that the story of the dynamite plot is a fabrication from 
end to end. This regardless of the fact that over 40,000 
letters and telegrams touching upon the plot were found 
in the offices of J. J. McNamara at Indianapolis. Some of 
these could have been "framed," it is true, but how other 
letters and telegrams could have been created in this man- 
ner no one has tried to explain. These have been evaded, 
instead by bombast, and promises of a "show-up" of the 
prosecutors and detectives connected with the case. The 
"show-up" is yet to come. 

I mention these things here because at the time I was 
solemnly inspecting the derrick car I had damaged months 
before, at the command of Hockin, international organizer 
and member of the international executive board, I was 
also shown a copy of the Bridgemens , Magazine, of which 
J. J. McNamara was editor, offering a reward of $500 for 
the capture of the Clinton, Iowa, dynamiter. By such 
simple methods did the leaders of labor delude their fol- 

40 



lowers at that time and later. And similar methods are 
in use today. 

If any lesson is to be learned by the Amercian people 
from the dynamite plot, it is that violence in labor unions 
must cease if the nation is to stand. Violence in such places 
is unAmerican; it is destructive of government and liberty 
and none realizes better than I to what success in our under- 
taking would have led. McNamara and Ryan, had they 
been supreme after the dynamiting would have by their 
violence and their greed for gold and power, dissipated the 
future of this country and the happiness and prosperity of 
its people as a hot sun dissipates a fog. 

The bridge was set without difficulty. The international 
executive board, I learned later, wanted to destroy it, but 
did not dare, and it was because of this fear that Hockin 
wanted to get the glycerine in the piers so that we could 
have blown the bridge without danger of detection. J. J. 
McNamara and Hockin, I learned, believed that Eddie 
Francis, business agent of the Chicago local, was in the 
pay of the open shop people, and because of this were 
afraid to try to dynamite any job in his district. 

Late in November of 1909 I was in Chicago with but 
little work, when Hockin paid me a visit. Nothing came 
of that, but on December 5 I received a telegram from him 
directing me to go to Indianapolis. I was now on the verge 
of what for the next two years was to be my sole occupa- 
tion, dynamiting. I arrived in Indianapolis on the morning 
of December 9th and met Hockin at the Lorraine hotel. 

"We're going to Muncie, Ind.," he said, "to buy 120 
quarts of nitroglycerine, and we must find a place to store 
it. We're going to open a big campaign, and we'll blow 
'em all sky high." 

We arrived at Muncie at noon of December 9, and 

41 



shortly afterward made arrangements to rent for $5 
per month the house at 227 Ebright street, owned by a man 
named Franklin. We paid the rent for three months, giv- 
ing as our principals the firm of Watson & Sons, of Cleve- 
land, and said that we wanted it for storing ornamental 
tile. We got half a dozen barrels, some sawdust and a 
piano box into the house and Hockin had a carpenter make 
a number of boxes to exactly fit a ten-quart nitro-glycerine 
can. 

We put up at the Braun hotel, Hockin as Charles Miller 
and I as Charles Clark. When we returned to the hotel 
Hockin greeted a stranger and a moment later introduced 
me to J. B. McNamara, the man destined to become infam- 
ous as the destroyer of the building of the Los Angeles 
Times. He was the inventor of the infernal machines we 
used from that time forward. 

"Do you know this man?" Hockin asked me. 

"No," I said, "but I know a man in Indianapolis who 
looks a whole lot like him." 

"Who is that?" the stranger asked. 

"J. J. McNamara," I said. 

"He's my brother," replied J. B. 

That night J. B. told me of causing four explosions, miles 
apart, at practically the same minute. Naturally I was im- 
pressed with the effectiveness of the device and carefully 
studied the operation. That it is the most effective infernal 
machine ever devised, I have been told by a number of de- 
tectives and powder experts. Its greatest value to us, how- 
ever, lay in the fact that it gave us ample time for getting 
away after the shot had been set, thus reducing our chances 
of capture and almost totally removing suspicion. 

J. B. told me of using the machine to damage the Wis- 
consin Bridge Company's bridge at Green Bay, Wis.; a 

42 



Von Spreckelson job at Indianapolis, and a number of other 
crimes. He was proud of his work as an inventor and also 
as a dynamiter, and laughed at the narrow escapes he had 
had. He told me that while looking over a big bridge built 
by McClintock & Marshall at Beaver, Pa., he and Hockin 
had been arrested as vagrants. They had twelve quarts 
of nitro-glycerine hidden on the river, but nothing suspic- 
ious on their persons and they were released. Of course, 
it would not have done for them to set the explosion, so the 
project was abandoned for the time. Later Hockin used 
a story about this bridge, an idea of his own, as a reason 
for turning traitor and keeping the Erectors' Association 
informed of what we were doing, while continuing to act 
as international organizer. J. B. McNamara was registered 
at the hotel under the now familiar name of J. B. Brice. 

The next morning we prepared the packages and the 
house for the reception of the nitro-glycerine and then drove 
six miles into the country to meet the well shooter, who 
was to have the nitro-glycerine on his wagon for us. We 
drove through De Soto, three miles from Muncie, where 
J. B. told me he had had at one time forty quarts of glycer- 
ine buried. I was much interested when we passed a deep 
hole in the ground to learn that it was all that remained 
of what had once been a nitro-glycerine factory. It had 
blown up and was then just as it had been after the explo- 
sion. I was to more fully realize the power of this stuff 
later when I learned that not a vestige of the infernal ma- 
chine remained after our explosions. Not so much as a 
clock wheel or a piece of wire was ever found when the 
explosion had been successful. 

A short distance beyond the site of the factory we met 
Charles Keizer, the well shooter, from whom Hockin had 
bought the glycerine. He was a sales agent for the Inde- 

43 



pendent Torpedo Company, of Findlay, Ohio. He had a 
wagon with the "soup". Hockin, after paying him, went 
back in his rig to Muncie, with orders to us to hurry. 

I asked the well shooter a good many questions about 
handling the stuff. He told me that one could never tell 
when it was going off. He said that sometimes it would 
stand considerable jar, while at other times the slightest 
shock would set it off. He showed me that the cans have 
two corks each and explained that it was always safer to 
pull both corks at once, as the inrush of air when one cork 
was pulled caused a friction that had sometimes been fol- 
lowed by explosions. We covered the boxes with horse 
blankets and thus moved the stuff to the house where we 
locked it in the piano box and then we all returned to 
Indianapolis. I arrived in Chicago on December 11. 

In the fall of 1909 an ironworker named Jim Hull planned 
with me to go into the contracting business and as a pre- 
liminary we began buying tools. Some of the tools we 
thus secured had been stolen and I was arrested. Hull 
was not suspected and I never mentioned his name, so that 
he escaped arrest and drifted out of my life. I was released 
on bond, retained Attorney Charles Erpstein, paid him 
$100, had my wife get $200 from Hockin and returned to 
work in Chicago. Later I pleaded guilty on my attor- 
ney's advice, although I was not guilty, and was given a 
sentence of thirty days in the Cook county jail. I served 
ten days and was released. I don't know now why the 
release was given me. 

In the meantime, before the case came to trial, Hockin 
came to Chicago and asked me about the case. This was 
early in April of 1910. He said he wanted me to dynamite 
the Mount Vernon car shops at Mount Vernon, 111., in 
course of construction by McClintock & Marshall. He said 

44 



he had explored the premises, located the watchmen and 
that the job would be easy. On a telegram from Hockin 
from Indianapolis, received at Chicago on Friday night, 
April 15, 1910, I went to Indianapolis, arriving there at 
4 a. m. Sunday. I registered at the Lorraine hotel where 
Hockin had a room for me, under my true name. I met 
Hockin in the lobby of the hotel at 6 a. m. and we went to 
international headquarters and discussed the work with J. 
J. McNamara, and Hockin gave me $25 expense money in 
the presence of J. J. McNamara. We learned the routes 
and train connections and then I was instructed to return 
to Chicago and wait orders, after I had set the explosions. 

J. J. had a suit case which he took from a wardrobe in 
his office, and this he gave to me. It contained two four- 
quart varnish cans filled with nitro-glycerine, two electric 
fulminating caps and two infernal machines. I was in- 
structed to place one charge under a locomotive crane and 
another under a hoisting engine in the Mount Vernon yards. 

I arrived in Mount Vernon, 111., at 6:20 p. m., April 17, 
1910. I talked with the watchman that night and gave 
him two cigars. The following day I watched the men 
at work and spent half of the night at the yards waiting 
for the watchman to leave the crane so that I could set 
the explosion. He did not leave it and I returned to my 
hotel. I had registered as William Clark. An opera com- 
pany arrived the next day and I tried to coax the watchman 
to go to the show. He would not do it, but stuck right 
with his crane. In desperation lest I should kill him when 
the machine blew up and in fear of vengeance from Hockin 
and McNamara if I did not set the explosion, I was for 
some hours at a loss. Then, although I did not have actual 
experience with the infernal machines, I saw a possible 
way of doing my work and protecting the watchman too. 

45 



I set a machine in the hoist, some distance from the crane, 
to go off two minutes before the charge I set in the crane, 
which I reached while the watchman was sitting on one 
end of it, by boldly walking to the other end. The ruse 
worked perfectly. The roar of the explosion at the hoist 
drew the watchman in that direction at a run and before 
he reached the dismantled hoist the explosion in the crane 
let go, completely wrecking it, and turning it over onto its 
side. 

I was at the depot when the explosions occurred and 
saw the brilliant flash which lit up the skies in every direc- 
tion. The train was a little late, and I had to put up at 
the Richmond hotel, Evanston, Ind., at midnight. The 
next day I went to Chicago. 

On the night of the explosion at Mt. Vernon, 111., a 
bridge at Mount Vernon, Ind., was destroyed by an explo- 
sion. I don't know anything about that explosion yet, 
though Hockin, after investigating, said he thought some 
striking coal miners had caused it, as the railroad which 
owned it had been hauling non-union and boycotted coal. 

If Hockin was right in his opinion of this, he cast an 
interesting light on labor in general. Apparently all of the 
explosions of the period of which I write were not due to 
the international executive board of the Bridge & Structural 
Iron Workers. In other words, labor leaders of various 
crafts and trades were engaged in dynamiting wherever 
opportunity for destruction presented itself. This indi- 
cates that union labor as conducted at that time, (and cer- 
tainly not greatly improved since) has violence for its cor- 
nerstone and its keystone, its foundation and its roof. This 
phase of union labor is the phase which is making it harder 
and harder for working men to survive the struggle for a 
livelihood and it will continue to be so until the individual 

46 



members themselves awake to the necessity of direct 
control of their jobs instead of leaving this work to hired 
men who labor only for their personal gain in wealth and 
power. 

A few days after I had returned to Chicago Hockin came 
and refused to pay me, saying I had caused an explosion 
at Mount Vernon, Ind., instead of at the right place. I 
showed him a newspaper clipping of what I had done in 
Illinois and he returned to investigate. Later he paid me 
and gave me the information above. 

When he paid me he and J. B. came to my house together. 
J. B. then showed Hockin and me clippings from news- 
papers giving accounts of explosions he had caused in Salt 
Lake. At Salt Lake he met Jack Bright, alias J. E. Munsey, 
since convicted at Indianapolis of complicity in the dyna- 
mite plot. Bright was business agent of the Salt Lake local 
and when J. B. McNamara blew up the Utah hotel, Bright 
was at the Blue Ribbon cigar store, two blocks away, and 
was thus provided with an unshakable alibi. That explosion 
took place in April of 1910. 

Shortly after this conversation I pleaded guilty to a 
charge of petty larceny in connection with the theft of 
the tools, although, I say again, I was an innocent purchaser 
of stolen property, and was given thirty days in jail. I was 
released on June 11, 1910. My partner in the proposed 
contracting business, Jim Hull, was wanted for horse 
stealing in Pueblo, Colo., and it was for this reason that I 
shielded him. 

After serving ten days in jail I returned to work at 
Twelfth street and Blue Island avenue, Chicago, and two 
days later Hockin came to me and told me he had two 
dynamiting jobs. 

I had a short bar of iron in my hand when he approached 

47 



me and now I gripped it hard. I was desperate and I decided 
that I would make one dash for liberty; one play that he 
might either take or leave. 

"Hockin," I said, "I want to tell you something. You 
have got to leave me alone and let me work at my trade 
or give me a steady job at dynamiting and I'll do nothing 
else." 

Had I known what the outcome of that declaration of 
independence would have been I would never have made it. 
But I did not know that the international executive board 
of my union had set its hand to the plow with no idea of 
turning back. I had no means of knowing that the time and 
attention of J. J. McNamara, international secretary and 
treasurer, was now so taken up with schemes of destruc- 
tion that his other and necessary and useful work was 
practically totally neglected. So as I saw the matter then, 
there was nothing to do but surrender when Hockin said : 

"All right. I've got work enough to keep you busy." 

"It's up to you," I replied. "But I want to tell you this : 
Any time I'm caught, you're all caught. I will spill the 
story as fast as I can once I feel the irons on my wrists. 
I am not going to stand pat." 

He only smiled as he walked away. 

I think it was on June 17 that I got a telegram from 
Hockin at Cincinnati, calling me there. I arrived in the 
morning of June 18 and called for a letter at the genera] 
delivery window, which Hockin had said would be awaiting 
me. There was no letter. I sat in a park near the post- 
office until 10 a. m. when I saw J. B. and Hockin at a corner, 
and joined them. 

We rode on a street car some distance to a park where, 
in the isolation this provided, Hockin outlined his plans.. 
We were to go to Indianapolis and get twelve quarts of 

48 



explosive and some infernal machines, after which we were 
to go to Cleveland and locate the Harvard street viaduct 
which McClintock & Marshall were erecting. From Cleve- 
land we were to go to Detroit where the local had made up 
a pot of $500 which they were willing to pay for five explo- 
sions, to occur on July 4 as a celebration. Hockin gave 
me $25 for expenses. 

En route to Indianapolis J. B. and I discussed the divi- 
sion of the money for the Cleveland job, and it was then 
that I discovered that Hockin had been stealing from me 
ever since I had been doing the dynamiting at his bidding. 
According to the figures then he owed me $525. 

It appears that the international executive board had 
set aside $200 and expenses for each job. J. B. was getting 
that amount. Hockin had been drawing that amount for 
the crimes I had committed, but he had given me only $125 
and expenses. He had also padded my expense accounts, 
thus increasing his stealings to a slight extent. This J. B. 
surmised on the train as we talked and when we reached 
J. J. McNamara's office we verified it by the check book 
stubs. J. J. McNamara said he would lay a trap to catch 
Hockin. 

We left Indianapolis that night with the glycerine and 
machines and got to Cleveland about midnight. I reg- 
istered as Miller, my companion as J. B. Brice. On Monday 
Hockin joined us and gave instructions for me to join him 
in Pittsburg after the Detroit explosion, using the name 
of J. W. McGraw. He was to use the name of Charles 
Laughlin. He instructed us to telephone to Pete Smith, 
business agent at Cleveland, when we set the Cleveland 
explosion, so that he could provide himself with an alibi. 

We set the explosion between 9 and 10 o'clock Tuesday 
evening in some light material and blew it all to pieces. 

49 



As soon as the charge was set we made for the depot and 
when I asked J. B. about calling Smith, he refused to do so, 
declaring that Smith would have to look out for himself. 
The explosion was set for 2 a. m., and it was just that time 
when we entered a room in the Park hotel near the union 
station at Toledo. 

"There's some noise in Cleveland about now," said J. B. 

The next day at noon we arrived in Detroit and paid a 
week's rent for a room at 45 Abbot street. J. B. got a letter 
from J. J. McNamara which contained an express receipt. 
From the express office we got a package containing four 
infernal machines. On the wrapper was the return address, 
"Room 422, No. 8 East Market St., Indianapolis, Ind." 
That was the address of the office of J. J. McNamara. 

Later in the day I saw J. B. talking with a man who had 
a blackened eye. He soon joined me and said: 

"There's been too much talk here. We will do nothing, 
for if we do we'll get caught." That afternoon I returned 
to Indianapolis and told J. J. what J. B. had said. J. B. 
went home to Cincinnati. 

I returned to Chicago, but before going J. J. told me in 
the future he would give me orders and pay me, but that 
Hockin would pay me for the Cleveland job. This was 
on June 25, 1910, and it was less than a month after that 
Hockin opened communication with the Erectors' Associa- 
tion and delivered our secrets as rapidly as he could learn 
them. 

On June 26 at Chicago I got orders to meet Hockin at 
the St. Clair hotel, Toledo, where he paid me for the Cleve- 
land explosion, and instructed me to go to the St. Charles 
hotel at Pittsburg, register as J. W. McGraw and make 
soundings about the piers of the Beaver bridge to determine 
whether we could put glycerine under them. There were a 

50 



number of other commissions regarding investigation to 
be made on structural work in progress at McKee's Rocks, 
Shoup's Ferry and other points near Pittsburg. Before we 
had concluded our investigations, J. J. called us home. 
Hockin had 68 quarts of nitroglycerine cached under a 
cooper shop at Rochester, Pa., and I took twelve quarts of 
this to Pete Smith at Cleveland on my way home. 

The bridge at Beaver, over the Ohio river, is the longest 
cantilever span in the United States and one of the cost- 
liest of bridges. It was erected by McClintock & Marshall, 
and it plays a most important part in the dynamite plot, 
although no attempt was ever made by us to destroy it. 
But it was this bridge which figured in the story told by 
Hockin when he first gave the Erectors' Association inform- 
ation of our plans. 

I do not know, but I have always believed that the tele- 
gram Hockin got at Pittsburg from J. J. McNamara, order- 
ing us home grew out of the discovery that Hockin was 
stealing my money, and that what took place between 
Hockin and J. J. when the former arrived in Indianapolis 
lead to Hockin's treason. 

At any rate, as was developed for the first time at the 
trial in Indianapolis of the conspirators in the plot, Hockin 
in July, or shortly after we returned home in response to 
J. J. McNamara's telegram, went to L. L. Jewell, a con- 
structing engineer for McClintock & Marshall, and, under 
an assumed name, told him that the executive board was 
planning to wreck the bridge under a passenger train. He 
declared he could not stand for murder and subsequently 
kept the Erectors' Association informed of what we planned 
to do. 

Jewell was a reluctant witness for the government. He 
was in Panama when he was wanted for the trial and the 

51 



aid of the war department was invoked to get him into the 
United States where a federal subpoena would be effective. 
He pointed out Hockin in the court room as the man who 
had told him of the bridge and other plots and said that 
up to that moment he had never known his true name. 

My reason for believing that it was the discovery of the 
double cross Hockin played upon me that drove him to the 
other side is the fact that it was Hockin's idea and no one 
else's to blow that bridge while a train was on it. He even 
urged that I do it, although he knew that it would kill the 
man who fired the shot as certainly as it would kill all on 
the train. 

The question came up when we discovered that it would 
be impossible for a man to get onto the bridge with the 
explosive. There were guards all over it. Hockin then 
suggested that a man could ride onto the bridge on a freight 
train and leap off at the pier where we wanted to set the 
charge. He could then flash an electric light which would 
be seen by a man in a boat up the river. This man could 
drift down under the pier and catch a handline that would 
be lowered from the bridge. The explosive could thus be 
lifted to the bridge and the charge set, after which the man 
on the bridge could slide down the line and so get away. 

I told him that no man could jump from a moving train 
onto the bridge and fail to go through to the water below. 
It was then that Hockin suggested the blowing up of the 
bridge and the train. He said, however, to me that the 
train would not be hurt. 

His idea was to have a man on the back platform of the 
train throw a can of glycerine onto the pier as the train 
rolled by. There were several obstacles which would pre- 
vent the can from going straight to the pier, thus giving 
the train time to move some distance before the can hit the 

52 



pier. He said the explosion would not occur until then 
and that the train would be well out of the way. I told 
him the can would explode the moment it hit the bridge 
and we said no more about it. That was all the conversa- 
tion ever held about this method of destroying the bridge, 
and I doubt if Hockin ever mentioned it to J. J. McNamara. 
Yet he told Jewell that we were planning the destruction 
of the train and used that as an excuse for turning us up. 

Pete Smith and a man whom he called "Nipper" Ander- 
son were at the depot in Cleveland to take the glycerine 
as Hockin and I came through. Smith said he would let 
me cause the explosions he wanted, but for the fact that he 
had promised the, job to some friends of his. They were 
to be at Akron, O., on July 4 as a celebration, and they took 
place with a great deal of damage. 

On July 5, J. J. wired me to come to Indianapolis. There 
he told me to go to Greenville, N. J., where the Phoenix 
Bridge Company was just completing a bridge which he 
wanted to destroy. He wired Webb at New York to meet 
me and instructed me to go to Scranton and find M. J. 
Hannon and look over a gas holder, which was being con- 
structed, with a view to exploding it later. I was also to 
stop at Pittsburg and buy a dozen clocks for new infernal 
machines. 

I arrived in Jersey City on July 7, and met F. C. Webb, 
at that time an ex-member of the executive board. I had 
eight quarts of nitro-glycerine and two infernal machines in 
my suitcase. While we were standing on the street, a man 
spoke to Webb and they talked for a moment. 

"I think that man is watching me," said Webb. "They 
have got me down as a bad man here, and I'm going to 
make 'em think I'm worse." 

Webb returned to New York and the next day I set two 

53 



charges of four quarts each in the legs of columns on the 
storage yard side of an inclined bridge. The clocks were 
set to go off at 4 a. m., July 9, but one did not go until 
4:35 o'clock. Several times subsequently this happened, 
and we never understood it. It was probably due to the 
clock losing time, but there was no way to prevent it. The 
explosion knocked down the lower two bents, totally 
wrecked things on that side of the bridge, and blew a piece 
of steel through a steel gondola car standing a hundred feet 
away. 

Later that morning I met Webb in New York and he 
showed me the papers containing the story of the explo- 
sion. Then I left for Scranton, arriving there that after- 
noon. Without finding Hannon I located the gas holder and 
decided that it was too well guarded to be blown. I then 
went to Pittsburg, made the investigations wanted, and 
found the only chance for an explosion was in an over- 
street incline being erected at McKee's Rocks by McClin- 
tock & Marshall. I got four quarts of glycerine from the 
Rochester cache and set it on a concrete pier between two 
girders, to go off at 2 a. m. July 15, left for Pittsburg at 
11 p. m., July 14, and arrived at Indianapolis on the morn- 
ing of July 15. 

J. B. was in his brother's office and as I entered he said: 

"I see you are wanted in Pittsburg." At the same time 
J. J. showed me a paper with the story of the Pittsburg 
explosion. 

At this point the connection of the union locals on the 
Pacific Coast with the dynamiting plot begins. J. J. showed 
me a telegram from E. A. Clancy at San Francisco, which 
was, in effect, as follows : 

"Has Jim left for the coast? If not, when will he leave? 

(Signed) "EUGENE." 

54 



J. B. was going to the coast that day. 

A water press copy of this telegram was introduced in 
evidence at the Indianapolis trial, where Clancy was con- 
victed of complicity in the plot. 

J. J. McNamara then showed me that he had nitro- 
glycerine stored in the vault on the fifth floor of the build- 
ing, and took from the supply four quarts, which he gave 
me w r ith instructions to go to Omaha and blow up an addi- 
tion which the Wisconsin Bridge Company was building 
to the powerhouse of the Omaha-Council Bluffs Street Rail- 
way Company. He urged me to hurry back to Indianapolis 
when the work was done, saying that he had several other 
jobs which needed immediate attention. 

J. B. and I traveled to Chicago together, arriving there 
that evening. I took a suitcase containing the machines 
and eight quarts of glycerine for the Omaha work. J. B. 
had two suitcases in one of which he had a dozen infernal 
machines. I don't know what he had in the other, but i 
think it was glycerine. J. B. told me that he had orders 
to report to Clancy and did not know what work he would 
be given. He left me at Chicago to get a westbound train, 
and I did not see him again until after the Times explosion 
in Los Angeles on October 1. 

I arrived in Omaha after a brief stay in Chicago, on 
July 19, putting up at the Union hotel as J. W. McGraw, 
and in the evening of July 21 placed eight quarts of glycer- 
ine in the basement of the power house at the foot of a 
column. I was at the depot waiting for a delayed train 
when the explosion took place. It broke glass near there 
and shook the buildings, although they were a mile from 
the power house. I arrived in Chicago on July 22 and 
in Indianapolis on July 24. 

By this time J. J. McNamara had his hands full in meet- 

55 



ing the demand for dynamiting. From locals all over the 
country, the calls were coming, for the open shop principal 
was gaining right and left despite all our destruction. Some 
of the smaller shops became frightened and organzied their 
work, but it was with the big shops that we were chiefly 
concerned and these, fighting for the right to do business 
as seemed best to them, stood steady as a rock against 
all our assaults. It was one thing to get the little shops 
closed to all labor save that of our union, and quite another 
thing to coerce men who had the capital to build their busi- 
nesses to large proportions. 

It seems to me, looking backward with what I may be 
pardoned for saying is an experienced eye, that it is at this 
point that organized labor makes its tremendous mistake. 
Heretofore all unions have gone upon the principle that 
they constitute the only factor in our economic life that is 
to be considered, or is worthy of consideration. Labor 
unions may be a great power for the good of the individual 
workman if they are properly conducted by men who have 
the interest of the masses at heart and who will study to 
advance those interests. But in advancing the interests 
of the masses the fact that the employers of America con- 
stitute a large part of the so-called masses should not be for- 
gotten. It is forgotten, and the result is, wrecked unions, 
or unions that are worse than useless and unions that are 
criminal in their conduct. None of us is fitted to speak 
save by experience and observation. My experience has 
taught me to believe that the old style union, the union 
with a chip on its shoulder, the union of Ryan and Gompers, 
has served its time and failed to serve its purpose. Such 
unions have been proven of no value to the members, of no 
value to the employers, of no value to the community. And 

56 



after all it is the community and not the laborer or the 
capitalist who pays the freight. 

Successful governments have been founded only upon 
the principle of compromise. No man ever got all that he 
demanded, unless he demanded it while looking through 
the sights of a gun at an unarmed man. Then he was not 
allowed to keep it long. 

The labor union, I believe, is properly a little govern- 
men within the larger government of the state. Its func- 
tions, while less expansive than those of the state, are never- 
theless, similar. The welfare of the union is, properly, the 
welfare of the state, and when there arises within the state 
a union which has aims and hopes in opposition to those 
of the state, that union is dangerous to the state, and the 
state in course of time must crush it in self-defense. 

The union, therefore, in my opinion, should be a strong 
body of workers with definite aims, but their aims should 
be reasonable and, fairly considered, realizable. In addi- 
tion to this it should be recognized that perfection is not 
to be obtained on earth and that therefore perhaps some of 
their pet theories will not work in practice. Ideas such as 
these will give such unions the same power of expansion as 
is provided by the engineer for a steel bridge. It is well 
known that one end of a steel bridge is always loosely laid 
upon the abutment pier. This is to allow for expansion 
and contraction of the metal. In other words, when the 
creator of that bridge has finished his creation he has pro- 
vided his creature with the power to adapt itself to such 
circumstances as may affect it. Had he made his bridge 
hard and fast at both ends the first change in weather 
would have wrecked it more completely than any charge 
of dynamite could have done. 

So far as I have been able to gather from extensive read- 

57 



ing during almost two years of confinement in the Los An- 
geles county jail, no man in America has recognized the 
truth of what I say so thoroughly, nor labored to overcome 
existing conditions within the unions by remedying their 
defects and creating virtues for them, more effectively than 
C. W. Post, regarded by union labor leaders throughout 
America as labor's worst enemy. 

In the skeleton on which is hung the union which he 
supports are the bones of living ideas, and it is my belief 
that as the individual laborer, be he skilled or unskilled, 
continues to think over the results to labor of the dynamite 
plot of which I was a part, he will realize that violence 
not only is unpatriotic, but that it is a serious obstacle to 
his enjoyment of his rights under the constitution of which 
he is so proud. 

Had J. J. McNamara, Ryan, the San Francisco crowd, 
Young, Webb and the others used real foresight coupled 
with real devotion to the cause of labor, I would never have 
been plunged into the whirlpool of violence which I was 
at this time entering. But they had not foresight and real 
devotion and therefore, immediately after the Omaha ex- 
plosion I began a dynamiting campaign which gave me not 
a moment's rest until my arrest nearly a year later, save 
when I was sent to the woods as a sort of guardian for J. 
B. McNamara, whose nerves had been shaken by the hide- 
ous results of the Times explosion and who needed rest 
and an opportunity to hide. Thanks to Hockin he failed 
to lie hidden, however much his conscience let him rest. 

I arrived in Indianapolis on July 24, drew my pay for 
the Omaha explosion and was sent by* J. J. McNamara to 
Milwaukee, with fourteen quarts of nitro-glycerine which 
were taken from the vault in the American Central Life 
building. This was contained in an original ten-quart can 

58 



and a four-quart varnish can, rectangular in shape. The 
larger can I carried in a canvas telescoping case made at 
the order of J. J. McNamara by the Drunker Trunk Com- 
pany of Cincinnati. It just fitted the can and gave the ap- 
pearance of a sample case. 

At Milwaukee I met William E. Redden, business agent 
of Local No. 8, my old local, and he gave me my instruc- 
tions. It is interesting to note that Redden was another 
of the men convicted at the Indianapolis trial. I was ex- 
pected to blow up a big coal unloader which the Heyl and 
Patterson Company was erecting for the Milwaukee West- 
ern Fuel Company. J. J. McNamara had told me to use 
six quarts of glycerine for this so before finding Redden I 
secured a two-quart and two four-quart varnish cans and 
poured them full from the larger can. This was done at 
the Atlas hotel on July 25, where I had registered as J. 
W. McGraw. It may be thought that despite what I say 
as to precautions taken by me to prevent loss of life in 
my explosions, I was taking awful chances in pouring the 
glycerine from one can to another in a room in a crowded 
hotel. I was taking awful chances, but by this time I had 
grown so used to handling the "soup" that danger of acci- 
dental explosion did not occur to me. Nor did an accidental 
explosion ever take place in glycerine in my charge. I sunk 
the empty can in the Milwaukee river and expressed the 
carrying case to J. J. McNamara. 

Redden and I looked over the work but decided that it 
had not advanced far enough to enable me to do any ma- 
terial damage. I was destined to get that coal unloader 
later, however, and when I got it it was totally wrecked. 

From Milwaukee I started for Duluth, following J. J. 
McNamara's instructions, but before leaving I buried six 
quarts of glycerine in a vacant lot near Miller's brewery. 

59 



The rest of it I took to Duluth. En route I spent 
half a day with my wife's brother, Herman A. Swantz, at 
Portage, Wis., and then continued to Duluth, arriving 
there on July 28 and putting up at the Spaulding hotel as 
J. W. McGraw. I found that the task I had been assigned 
by J. J. McNamara was the destruction of another coal 
unloader at Superior. On August 1, after spending a few 
days getting my bearings and visiting with another of my 
wife's brothers, Emil Swantz, I took the glycerine to Su- 
perior on a street car and set it in the legs of the structure 
over the trucks of the unloader. This was at 7 o'clock in 
the evening. The blast was to occur at midnight. The 
glycerine was divided into two portions and two infernal 
machines were used. In entering the yard I encountered 
a watchman with a dog. I hid quickly, but my heart was 
in my throat for fear that dog would smell me. I had by 
this time grown so expert in dodging watchmen that they 
gave me no concern unless there were so many of them 
there was no chance to dodge. The dog, however, paid 
no attention to me and I set the explosion without further 
incident. 

I was standing in front of the Spaulding hotel with my 
watch in my hand when the explosion went off. I saw 
that awful glare and I knew that serious damage had been 
done. But when thirty minutes later another explosion 
went off I was badly frightened for fear that men who 
must have been about the wreckage had been injured. This 
was not the case I learned afterward, but it was several 
days before my nerves settled down again. The clock, of 
course, had run slow again. It developed that serious dam- 
age had resulted. The work of constructing the unloader 
was almost finished and my two shots had torn it pretty 
well to pieces. 

60 



I left Duluth on the morning of August 2, going to Win- 
ton, where I visited another brother-in-law, August Swantz, 
a sawyer in a mill. I took August back to Chicago with 
me and on August 9 went to Indianapolis, where J. J. Mc- 
Namara ordered me to go to the Rochester, Pa., cache and 
get twenty quarts of glycerine for three explosions to be 
made at Kansas City, Mo. I was also instructed to get a 
dozen clocks at Pittsburgh, as we were again out of in- 
fernal machines. I left Indianapolis on the evening of 
August 11, arrived in Pittsburgh in the morning and got 
the clocks. On August 13 I went to Rochester and there 
encountered the first serious shock of my career as a dyna- 
miter, a shock such as I was only to receive again when I 
was arrested. The nitro-glycerine was gone ! 

I did not discover this fact until I had crawled under the 
cooper shop where the explosive was buried. My heart 
thumped and a lump rose in my throat until I could hardly 
breathe. I expected each moment to be my last and I 
was certain that if I was not shot without warning, I would 
be arrested. 

But I did not go back to J. J. McNamara empty handed. 
Instead I went to Detroit and dug up ten quarts buried 
there and arrived with it in Indianapolis on August 15. 

McNamara was furious at the loss of the nitro-glycerine 
and accused J. B. McNamara and me of carelessness. This 
was a rank injustice as I had had nothing to do with mak- 
ing the Rochester cache, but I had my own opinion and I 
expressed it. I told him that I thought Hockin had either 
stolen the glycerine or that he had informed on us and 
the explosive had been removed by detectives. J. J. Mc- 
Namara was somewhat impressed with this argument and 
said that a man who would double-cross me as Hockin had 
done, and double-cross the union by padding my expense 

61 



accounts for his own gain, would be the first to squeal. 
As I mentioned above, it developed at the Indianapolis 
trial that Hockin began to give away our secrets in July, 
about two weeks before I discovered the loss of the glycer- 
ine. Informed of the cache by Hockin, L. L. Jewell had 
the nitro removed. 

But J. J. McNamara was little interested in how the ex- 
plosive had disappeared. He had reached a stage now 
w r here he did not care for anything save an open road to 
destroying property and the money it cost him to do the 
work. He thought money and destruction all the time; 
his own money, or the union's which he used as his own, 
and the destruction of other people's property. 

I waited in Indianapolis while J. J. McNamara made up 
the infernal machines. He gave me four of these, two 
more quarts of glycerine and caps for three explosions 
and orders to blow up a bridge McClintock and Marshall 
was building for the Armour Company at Kansas City and 
then go to Peoria, 111., where Ed Smythe, the business 
agent, would tell me what to do. J. J. McNamara was 
going west on an electioneering trip, wishing to be re- 
elected to the office he held, and said he would be in Kansas 
City on August 23 and wanted the explosion there before 
he arrived. 

I got to Kansas City on August 19, prospected the bridge 
workings and set the explosion on August 22 in daylight, 
with men working all about me. The clock was timed for 
9 :30 p. m., but it did not go off. I thought I had been 
discovered but went to the material pile and found the 
clock had gone off. Tested and found the battery was 
dead. The next day I got a new battery and reset the ex- 
plosion for that night. It went off, doing small damage, 
and I got a 10 o'clock train for Peoria. 

62 



In working about the plant on the night of August 21 
I set a four-quart can of glycerine and three machines in 
some bushes and could not find them again. It was very 
dark and I did not dare search for them, fearing to stumble 
over them in the dark and cause an explosion. They were 
found there about one year later. 

I arrived in Peoria on the morning of August 24 and 
found Smythe at his home. 413 Forsythe street. He took 
me to East Peoria w r here in the yards of the Peoria and 
Pekin railroad McClintock and Marshall had material stored 
for a bridge they were to build. We then visited the foun- 
dry of Lucas and Sons, in Peoria. 

"I want this damn shop laid flat on the ground/' said 
Smythe. He also wanted a shot placed in a little crane 
in the yard. 

I was without explosives or machines, so went to In- 
dianapolis on August 25 and that night J. J. McXamara 
arrived. He cursed me for the loss, declared he could not 
stand the expense and that I was getting careless. Glycer- 
ine at that time cost $1.30 per quart. I had lost four quarts. 
I felt like offering to stand the loss myself but I did not. 
His principal grievance was that the lost glycerine could 
have been made to do $10,000 damage. 

He had but four quarts left in the vault and that was 
not enough, so we had to locate a well shooter. I went 
to Albany, Ind., the next day and heard of a well shooter 
named M. J. Morehart at Portland. I arranged with him 
for the delivery of 120 quarts at Albany on Tuesday, Au- 
gust 30, and went back to Indianapolis and got $300 from J. 
J. McNamara. He told me then to find a cache near 
Muncie but not to rent a house as that cost money. I 
went to Muncie, got a wagon and team and some packing 
boxes, but was unable to locate a cache. Without know- 

63 



ing what I was going to do with it I drove to Albany and 
transferred the glycerine to my wagon and started back. 
I was looking for a cache, but I had determined that if I 
did not find one I would drive right to the American Cen- 
tral Life building in the heart of Indianapolis and get J. 
J. McNamara to help me carry the stuff to the vault on 
the fifth floor. And I believe that had I done so he would 
have thought nothing unusual had taken place. 

However, as I was driving past the Indiana Wire and 
Iron Company works near Muncie I saw a cinder pile and 
in that I cached the nitro. This was at noon and had any- 
one cared to look out of a window of the works they could 
have seen me digging away in those cinders. I took twenty 
quarts with me direct to Indianapolis and put it in a trunk 
in the vault. 

"I want you to bring that glycerine here at once," J. J. 
told me. "This is the safest place and nobody can steal it 
here. I would just as soon have a can or two under my 
desk for nobody on earth will ever think of looking for the 
stuff here." 

The next day I made two trips to Muncie and thus 
brought forty quarts to the vault. I made a third trip at 
night and found a man walking on the road near the cinder 
pile. As he walked past me I stopped digging, then as he 
turned off toward the iron works I resumed my task, but 
the glycerine was gone ! I was absolutely certain then that 
the jig was up and that it would not be many days before 
we were all arrested. 

A curious bit of evidence which was used at the Indian- 
apolis trial and would have been used at the trial of the 
McNamaras in Los Angeles had they not pleaded guilty, 
will be of interest here. It is the combination of the vault 
in which we kept the explosives, written in my memo- 

64 



randum book in J. J. McNamara's handwriting. It is as 
follows : 

Four turns to the left to 20; three turns to the right to 
40; two turns to the left to 80; right to 35. 

As has been stated, it is now known that Hockiri was 
furnishing Jewell with information as early as July 10, 
1910. I concluded then that Hockin had detectives on my 
trail and that it was they who had taken the explosive. 
Events of the next few days tended to confirm this sus- 
picion. 

J. J. McNamara had told me to say nothing to Hockin 
about J. B.'s whereabouts. I only knew he was in the 
west, but when Hockin asked me a day or so later I told 
him I knew nothing. I am convinced that Hockin wanted 
the information to give to Jewell, and thus get it to the 
detectives, and I surmised that J. B. had escaped their shad- 
ows. In the light of present knowledge of the work of 
detectives at that time I am convinced that Burns was 
trying to get Gompers, believing him to have guilty knowl- 
edge of the plot. This belief, probably, was based upon 
the fact that Ryan, president of the bridgemen, was vice- 
president of the American Federation of Labor, of which 
Gompers was president. It would seem to a suspicious 
man that Gompers must have known of the plot. 

According to Charles Catlin, turnkey at the Los Angeles 
county jail, Gompers wept when he saw the McNamara 
brothers in their cell, and begged them to "stand pat." 

"I was assigned to duty inside the tank in which the 
McNamaras were confined," Catlin told me, "and when 
Samuel Gompers entered the tank, he clasped the brothers 
about the neck and burst into tears. 

;< 'For God's sake, boys/ he cried, 'stand pat or we are all 

65 



ruined/ " Catlin said Gompers said. After a slight pause 
he added : "But I know you are innocent. " 

"The trio," said Catlin, "knew that I was in the cells with 
them, but whether they thought I could not hear what was 
said I do not know. I did not hear all of their conversa- 
tion." 

On September 1, in daylight, I made an extensive search, 
tearing that cinder pile to pieces, but without finding any- 
thing. I then reported to J. J. 

"That will not stop us now," he said. "Take twenty 
quarts to Peoria and come back." 

I arrived in Peoria that evening and with Smythe's aid 
cached the glycerine in an orchard near the yard of the 
Peoria and Pekin railroad. 

Smythe and I discussed labor conditions which were bad 
throughout the country. Three years of almost continuous 
dynamiting had had the effect of creating more open shops. 
The convention of the bridgemen at Rochester, N. Y., was 
approaching and Smythe said he was going to support 
Ryan, McNamara and Hockin for re-election. I left that 
same evening and arrived in Indianapolis at 3 o'clock in 
the morning, after asking Smythe to get half a dozen four- 
quart cans so I could divide my glycerine when I got back. 

McNamara ordered me to take ten quarts more to Peoria 
and he gave me four infernal machines, with instructions 
to see if I could not make one machine explode more than 
one blast. Smythe and I experimented with this but the 
batteries were too weak for the work and thus McNa- 
mara's desire to save the trifling cost of the machines was 
frustrated. -I arrived in Peoria at 6 o'clock on the after- 
noon of September 3, 1910, placed the glycerine with the 

66 4 



other cans and registered at the Metropolitan hotel as J. 
W. McGraw. 

I went back to the orchard later in the evening and met 
Smythe by appointment. He was soaking wet and cov- 
ered with cornsilks. He had been forced to dodge through 
a cornfield to avoid meeting some friends. Smythe dug 
up from where he had them planted, eight four-quart 
and four two-quart round fruit cans. These, aside from 
being awkward to carry, had sealed tops and I was afraid 
that I would catch a drop between the top and the can 
as I closed it and thus cause an explosion. I told Smythe 
the explosion would occur that night, so he went to a 
theater with his wife and saved the seat checks for an 
alibi. 

I set two ten-quart cans in a pile of material in the rail- 
road yards with the clock timed for an explosion at 10:30 
p. m. While I was at this work it began to rain and I was 
soon soaked through. With the other ten-quart can, bare 
of wrappings as it came from the filling room at the fac- 
tory and a two-quart round can, empty, in my hands and 
two infernal machines in my pockets I went to Peoria and 
took shelter until the rain ceased. The glycerine rode on 
the floor of the street car between my feet. After the storm 
I went to Lucas Brothers' foundry and with the cans in my 
hands climbed a high board fence and got into the yards. 
I then poured two quarts into the little can and set it with 
an infernal machine under the crane. The doors to the 
foundry were closed, but I opened them and set the re- 
maining eight quarts of glycerine in the jaw of a big rivet- 
ing machine. These clocks were also set for 10:30 p. m. 
and it was then 9 o'clock. 

I was at my hotel when the explosions went off. Those 
at the Lucas foundry came close together. After an inter- 

67 



val one of the charges at the railroad yards exploded but 
the other did not and was found the next day. I got a 
train at midnight and arrived in Chicago at 5 o'clock. 
While my wife prepared breakfast I read the newspaper 
accounts of the explosion. 

Three or four days after this Hockin called me on the 
telephone and I met him at the Federal building. There 
we had it out about the money he had withheld from me. 
He asked me what I was going to do about it and I told 
him there was nothing I could do. He said that his ex- 
penses had been heavy and he had needed the money him- 
self. I reminded him that I was constantly running about 
the country with my hands filled with explosives and that 
it seemed to me he could have got his money from some- 
one else with better grace or made his expenses lighter. I 
refused to drink with' him and in other ways informed 
him that I was finished with his acquaintance. 

On September 13 I went to Indianapolis at J. J. McNa- 
mara's command. The Rochester convention was approach- 
ing, and it seemed as though everybody in the union wanted 
an explosion to take place in his district while he was away 
from home and thus beyond suspicion. J. J. also com- 
plained about the loss of the ten quarts which did not 
explode at Peoria and said I should have retrieved it. I 
told him I would not have gone back for it if my life de- 
pended on it. I threatened to quit and join the Erectors' 
Association. 

"You won't last long if you do," J. J. said, and there 
was a mean look in his eyes. I knew he meant business. 

In making the statement I had been joking, but it set 
me to thinking. I was upon the point of doing it but de- 
cided against it because I feared they would think me 
crazy and believe none of my story save that part about 

68 



the explosions. I realized that proof of complicity on the 
part of the union would be difficult to get. Thus the mat- 
ter rested. 

On September 14, J. J. and I arrived with twenty quarts 
of glycerine in Cleveland. He went to the Forest City 
hotel, carrying the explosive, and registered as George J. 
Clark. The glycerine was delivered to Pete Smith and I 
returned to Indianapolis while J. J. went on to Rochester. 
He had ordered me to take ten quarts from the vault and 
cache it at Beach Grove, near Indianapolis, in order to 
have it convenient in case the executive board, at a meet- 
ing to be held at Rochester, voted to destroy the shops of 
the Big Four railroad being built at that place by McClin- 
tock and Marshall. I was then to go to Milwaukee and 
blow up the new coal unloader of the Milwaukee Western 
Fuel Company being built by Heyl and Patterson while 
William Redden and other delegates were at the conven- 
tion and were thus provided with alibis. This was the job 
which I had looked over before and found not far enough 
advanced to justify an explosion. I found this still to be 
the case and that the work was also better guarded and 
lighted than it had been, and I suspected that the watch- 
men were looking for the dynamiter. I buried six quarts 
on the river near the Wisconsin Ice Company's storage 
houses and went to Chicago. I had seen Bill Shoup, busi- 
ness agent, and Jim Coughlin, assistant business agent of 
the Chicago local, as I passed through en route to Mil- 
waukee, but they were not versed in dynamiting and each 
put it up to the other. They told me they wanted me to 
destroy a plant which was being erected between Pine and 
Gary, Ind., by the Pittsburgh Construction Company, while 
they were at the convention, but they would not help me 
locate the work. When I returned to Chicago on Septem- 

69 



ber 19, they had gone to the convention. I looked about 
in that section but could not locate the job, so returned 
to Indianapolis. 

There I filled two four-quart varnish cans with glycerine 
from the supply in the vault and buried these near Pine, 
111., on September 21. They are there yet. 

I returned to Indianapolis on September 28 and on the 
following day cached thirty quarts of glycerine, all that 
the vault contained, in a creek bottom near Beach Grove. 

That night J. J. returned to Indianapolis. He had told 
me on leaving that if there were to be any other explosions 
while the convention was in session besides those at Mil- 
waukee and Pine, he would write to me at the Indianapolis 
general delivery as McGraw. He now asked me why I 
had neglected his orders and it developed that he had sent 
the letter under my true name. The next day he got that 
letter out of the postoffice and I don't know yet what 
plant had been ordered damaged. 

On September 29 and 30 I loafed about Indianapolis, 
my mind at ease. Those were the last easy moments I 
have experienced, for on October 1 the awfulness of it all 
was borne in upon me as I had never felt it before. 

Having gone through four years of dynamiting without 
harming a single person, intentionally or unintentionally, 
I think it is permitted of me to say of myself that I am 
not and never was, blood-thirsty. By the fall of 1910 I 
had become well calloused to dynamiting property. Cus- 
tom makes the laws by which we are governed, be they of 
a political, social or individual nature. It had been for 
almost four years customary for me to dynamite property, 
therefore I was reaching a point where I gave it little or 
no thought. Now, however, I was to realize completely 
for the first time, the position in which I w r as placed. 

70 



The morning papers of October 1 carried the news of 
the dynamiting of the Los Angeles Times building. Twenty 
persons were killed, caught like rats in a trap, as they were 
laboring as free American citizens to provide for their fam- 
ilies. Some of them were burned to death. Others were 
killed instantly by the explosion ; others leaped from win- 
dows and lingered for days before the tender mercy of the 
grave, kinder than the heart of the man who had caused 
their suffering, relieved their pain. 

I was overwhelmed with a sense of doom and naturally 
I sought the mind which had mastered mine and was guid- 
ing it. I went to the office of J. J. McNamara and found 
him cheerfully reading the details of this horror. 

"Seen the morning papers?" he asked with a smile. 

"It's about as bad as it can get," I replied, soberly. "Did 
J. B. do that?" 

"I shouldn't be surprised if he did," J. J. replied. 

"But think of the people," I said. 

"That's all right. This will make them sit up and take 
notice, and that's what J. ,B. went out to the coast to do." 

For a moment there was silence between us and then 
he said : 

"I don't know that I like this mixing in with other unions. 
That wild San Francisco bunch did this and it seems to me 
that if we take care of our own line of work we'll have 
our hands full. But it sure did shake things up." 

I was too blue to talk further about it and J. J. began 
talking of work for me to do and told me that he had a 
letter from F. C. Webb in New York, referring to a depot 
which the Phoenix Bridge Co. was erecting for the New 
York, New Haven and Hartford railroad at Worcester, 
Mass. Webb said that Roxy Kline was superintendent 
of the work and that he thought J. B. or me would handle 

71 



it better. McNamara said he wanted an immediate echo 
in the east of the "noise in the west" and told me to take 
eight quarts of glycerine and get to Worcester as soon as 
possible. I arrived there on October 3 and set the blast 
on Sunday night, October 6. One was put under a derrick 
car and one on the end of a girder on an overhead street 
crossing. It went off at midnight and was highly suc- 
cessful. 

I went to Boston, remained there a few hours and trav- 
eled through Worcester that morning to Springfield, where 
I had orders to look over the municipal group of buildings 
and report as to whether it was worth an explosion at 
that time. I stopped in Springfield at the Hinckley hotel 
as William King. That same evening I arrived in New 
York to find Webb, but he was out of town. The next 
morning I went to Pittsburgh, where I bought some more 
clocks and spent the night at the St. Charles hotel as J. 
W. McGraw. I arrived in Indianapolis on October 15. 

J. J. McNamara and I again discussed the Times ex- 
plosion. J. J. said he had learned that J. B. had caused 
the destruction and that he was 200 miles from Los An- 
geles when it went off. 

"He hid in San Francisco two days and then got to 
cover elsewhere," said J. J. 

On Saturday, October 16, I left Indianapolis for Lexing- 
ton, Ky., where I put up at the Reed hotel as William 
King. On the next day, following J. J.'s orders, I went 
to Highbridge, Ky., to look over a bridge the American. 
Bridge Company was building for the Queen & Crescent 
route, which J. J. wanted dynamited. I found no watch- 
men and splendid opportunity and so reported to J. J. at 
Indianapolis the next day. J. J. was busy with some con- 

72 



vention reports which had to be made at once and I was 
told to go to Chicago and wait. 

A week later I arranged with Marion Sharp, 620 Ex- 
change street, Kenosha, Wis., to go with him and several 
others on a hunting trip. 

On November 4 J. J. McNamara came to Chicago and 
told me he had an explosion in sight. I told him I was 
going hunting on Monday and hated to give it up. He 
asked me many details of the trip and finally asked if the 
party could stand an addition of one man. Louis Zeiss, 
a brother of my old roommate, Fred Zeiss; Willie and 
Charles Lawrence and Marion Sharp were going with me 
and I said I supposed they would not care. 

J. J. then told me that he wanted J. B. to go to the woods 
and hide for awhile. We did not know then that Burns 
was after us and never learned of it until we read it in a 
magazine article some time later. 

"J. B. has changed so much his own sister did not 
know him," said J. J. "You and J. B. stay up there until 
the close of the hunting season no matter what the others 
do. J. B. calls himself Frank Sullivan, and for heaven's 
sake don't make a slip on his name. When you get to the 
woods and are settled send me a note, 'Our old friend the 
carpenter is looking well,' and address it to J. J. Sandusky, 
P. O. Box 1, Indianapolis. Then I'll know you are all right 
in the woods." 

That night Hockin called me on the telephone and asked 
me if I had seen the "queer guy," meaning J. B. At that 
time there was some suspicion that J. B.'s mind had be- 
come unbalanced. He urged me to stand pat if I met any- 
body in the woods, a warning which had a great deal of 
significance, had I but known it, as we were followed by 
Burns detectives into the woods and kept under watch 

73 



during our entire stay. The detectives passed as hunters 
and J. B. even posed for photographs for them. 

We got to Kenosha on Sunday, November 5, and before 
breakfast J. B. called me on the phone at Sharp's house. 
He was at the Eikelman hotel. Our party went down 
town and met him and I narrowly checked myself intro- 
ducing him as Brice, by which name I almost always 
called him. 

We had several drinks and J. B. was rapidly getting 
drunk. 

On this statement United States Senator Kern, counsel 
for the defense at the Indianapolis trial, closely questioned 
me, thinking that I had misstated the fact or the date. I 
had already testified, as I wrote above, that the day was 
Sunday and he wanted to know how we got a drink on 
that day. 

"The back door," I said, and a laugh went around the 
courtroom. 

When I went with J. B. to get a hunting license for 
him, a most accurate description of him was taken. This 
made him uneasy and suspicious. He had grounds for un- 
easiness but not for suspicion, as a number of hunters are 
killed in that country every year by being mistaken for 
deer in the woods, and the authorities are careful in issuing 
licenses. 

On November 7 we made camp five miles southeast of 
Conover, Wis. On November 9 I was hunting alone in 
the woods when I heard a pistol shot and the zipp of a 
bullet as it whistled by my ear. I mounted a stump and 
saw J. B. a hundred yards down a hillside. I suspected 
from the first that he was trying to kill me and I have 
never changed my mind. I went down to him and asked 
him what he was shooting at. He said : 

74 



"A rabbit." 

The ground was covered with snow and I found no 
tracks. I taxed him with trying to kill me and he admitted 
he had shot to scare me. 

We sat down on a log, silently for some time, when sud- 
denly he burst out : 

"If they ever catch me they'll take me back to Los 
Angeles and hang me without a trial. I never expected 
to kill so many people." 

He said he got to San Francisco four days after leaving 
me at Chicago. E. A. Clancy, international first vice-presi- 
dent of the bridgemen's union, introduced him to M. A. 
Schmidt and Dave Caplin, both of whom are now fugitives 
from justice. Caplin is believed to be dead. 

Schmidt had an infernal machine for setting houses on 
fire which was somewhat similar to the ones I was using. 
The release of the alarm shot a bolt through a small bottle 
contained within a can and broke it. The mixture of the 
liquids in bottle and can produced a flame. He said a 
friend of Olaf Tvietmoe had provided the chemicals. This 
was the first I ever heard of Tvietmoe, of San Francisco, 
secretary-treasurer of the State Buildings Trade Council, 
who was also convicted at Indianapolis on the conspiracy 
charge. 

J. B. said the "Coast Bunch" was lavish with money and 
that he had been given $3000 in three months. He got it 
$500 at a time. 

He told me of setting explosions at Seattle and Oakland 
as well as of the Times affair. Schmidt and Caplin helped 
him get the nitro-gelatine, 80 per cent strong, from the 
Giant Powder Works at Giant, Cal. 

"Tvietmoe ordered Schmidt, Caplin and me to look over 
the Times," said J. B. "Schmidt picked up a woman in 

75 



San Francisco so I insisted that he stay there. I regis- 
tered at two hotels. I lived at the Baltimore, on Fifth 
street, and made the machines at the other, the name of 
which I don't remember. I set twenty pounds of nitro- 
gelatine attached to a machine in the Times building, 
among some ink barrels. The whole shot was in a suit 
case. Fve seen the place where I set it called Ink Alley 
in the newspapers since. It was timed for 1 o'clock the 
next morning. 

"Then I went to the home of General Harrison Gray 
Otis, owner of the Times and the leader of the open shop 
forces in the west, and set a similar charge under his 
window. Next I went to the home of F. J. Zeehandelaar, 
secretary of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, 
the organization of the open shop people in Los Angeles, 
and placed another suit case ready to explode under his 
house. 

"After setting these I caught a train for San Francisco 
and was 200 miles away when the explosion occurred. 
The Times bomb was the only one to go off. 

"I remained in San Francisco four days. Caplin and 
I threw a suit case containing four machines into San 
Francisco bay as I went to Oakland to take a train east. 
I gave Caplin a claim check and told him to be sure and 
get a suit case which I had left in the ferry building check 
room. This contained one of Schmidt's machines, some 
fuse and three copies of the San Francisco Bulletin, dates 
of October 1, 2 and 3, containing accounts of the Times 
explosion. This case was to be thrown into the bay." 

Caplin did not do this and some weeks later the case 
was opened by the parcel room attendant and the things 
J. B. described were found. This was the first clue De- 
tective Burns secured connecting J. B. McNamara with 

76 



the Times explosion. It was only a few days before he 
had shadows on J. B.'s trail and he arrested him the 
moment things looked propitious. The detective work done 
in this case was, to my mind, the most brilliant that has 
ever attracted the attention of the American public. 

In the detection of the man who set the Times explo- 
sion Burns was not helped by any traitorous influence. 
Hockin was unable to give any information as to J. B/s 
movements because he did not even know where he was. 
It was to learn this that he questioned me in Chicago and 
failing there, he had no source to turn to, as J. J. Mc- 
Namara, suspecting him, would of course not tell him. 

J. B. said he left Oakland for Indianapolis but at Salt 
Lake City left the train because people were "looking at 
him. ,, The result of his work at Los Angeles had shattered 
his nerves and when I last saw him in the Los Angeles coun- 
ty jail he was still nervous. At Salt Lake he was shielded 
for two weeks, he said, by J. E. Munsey (Jack Bright), 
business agent of the bridgeman's local. He let his beard 
grow and called himself Williams. Then he went to the 
home of his sister in Nebraska and remained there until 
J. J. sent Frank Eckoff from Indianapolis, to get him and 
take care of him. 

Eckoflf was a government witness at the Indianapolis 
trials and testified that J. B. begged him to go into the 
field with him and shoot him and tell his sister it was an 
accident. They arrived in Indianapolis on November 1. 
J. B. registered at the Plaza hotel as Frank Sullivan and 
then joined me in the woods. He was then a nervous 
wreck, almost insane and I am certain that he shot to 
kill me and did not care whether I returned the fire and 
killed him. 

He was blood thirsty afterward. He asked me one day 

77 



to hold a can in my hand while he shot at it. He was a 
dead shot and on one occasion I saw him kill a porcupine 
seventy-five feet away with a pistol. 

After J. B. told me the story of the Times explosion 
and I saw how it had affected him I could not get it off 
my mind, but there was nothing else to do but live on 
and see what would happen. I had reached a point where 
my emotions were dead. Nothing gave me a sensation 
of fear; I felt no courage. The trip to the woods might 
just as well have not been made for all the good it did me. 

About the end of November J. B. went to Conover to 
buy groceries and to get our mail. Sharp, Willie Lawrence 
and Zeiss had returned to their homes. J. B. got a letter ad- 
dressed to me on the stationery of the "Capital Construction 
Co., ,, a dummy which J. J. used, and opened it. J. J. had been 
ready to leave for the American Federation of Labor con- 
vention at St. Louis at the time we left for the woods and 
had told me he would see the Coast Bunch and let us know 
how things were out there. This letter said, "Met friends 
from the coast. Everything is quiet out there. " On the 
strength of this encouraging news J. B. got drunk. I went 
to Conover the next day, Sunday, and found him sur- 
rounded by several men who were camped near us and 
who afterward proved to be Burns detectives. I learned 
later that when I left Indianapolis to go to Chicago to pre- 
pare for the hunting trip Hockin took Raymond Burns 
to the depot and pointed me out to him. They were 
camped near us and we saw them frequently. It was on 
this Sunday that J. B. posed for them and again on De- 
cember 4. The hunting season ends December 3 and on 
that day I went to Chicago, J. B. staying at the camp until 
December 5. The day before he left he was at Sucker 
lake, near the camp, and posed for the picture. The name 

78 



of the lake and the action of J. B. in this matter are sug- 
gestive. 

J. B. joined me at my house in Chicago on December 
8 and left at noon for Indianapolis. On December 8 I 
went to Indianapolis on receipt of a wire from J. J. Mc- 
Namara. J. B. met me at the train on the morning of 
December 9 and J. J. gave me instructions to go to Los An- 
geles and damage or destroy the Times auxiliary plant, 
the Llewellyn Iron Works, the Baker Iron Works, the 
Hall of Records and the Alexandria hotel annex. The two 
last named buildings were then in course of construction. 
I was to take twelve quarts of glycerine. He said that 
he had promised the "coast bunch" a Christmas present 
and he wanted the explosions to come off on Christmas 
day. 

The Times auxiliary plant comprised the building and ma- 
chinery which General Otis, anticipating for years some at- 
tempt to destroy his property, had held in reserve for an 
emergency. Despite the havoc wrought by J. B. in the 
Times plant the grizzled old war veteran never missed an 
edition of his paper, for within an hour after the explosion 
the auxiliary presses were grinding out an issue telling 
the story. This had been overlooked by the "coast bunch" 
and now I was to destroy it. 

"Be sure and get a good mess under the Times auxiliary," 
said J. B., who was present as I got my instructions, "and 
add another dozen or so to the list." 

I told them I would look into it but I made up my mind 
that if there was any danger of killing people there would 
be no explosion in the Times plant or anywhere else. 

I had to go to Beach Grove to get the glycerine from 
the cache there and in doing this I had the closest call 
of my career. The ground was frozen and I had to use 

79 



the utmost caution in unearthing the explosive. Then, with 
a 10-quart can in one hand and a 2-quart can in the other 
I lost my footing and fell down an embankment six feet 
high. After I stopped falling I slid for some distance on 
the sleet covered ground. I thought when I felt myself 
go that it was the end of earthly things for me, but for 
some reason, or despite reasons, the stuff did not explode. 
Certainly I was not born to be blown up. 

With instructions to avoid all labor leaders in Los Angeles 
but to see those in San Francisco after the explosion, and 
to write from Chicago on my return, I left Indianapolis 
on December 10, spent two days in Chicago and arrived 
in Los Angeles December 15. I put up at the Rosslyn 
hotel as T. F. McKee. There I had room No. 255. In the 
evening I cached the glycerine in the bed of the Los An- 
geles river. 

It may be of some interest to note here that on Septem- 
ber 11, 1911, nearly a year later, I went with Police Detec- 
tives C. H. Jones and Bruce Boyd and Burns Detective 
Malcolm MacLaren, to the spot where this cache had been 
made and proved to them that it was the spot by unearth- 
ing some cardboard and a cap which had exploded by acci- 
dent, injuring my hand. Some pieces of the cap remained 
in the hand and were extracted by my wife when I re- 
turned to Chicago. 

I arrived in Los Angeles on a Thursday. On the fol- 
lowing Sunday I located the Times auxiliary plant. They 
were putting in a new press, and after studying their sys- 
tem of work I decided that I would not place the shot as 
there were people in the building at all hours, day and 
night. It was also well lighted and guarded and doubtless 
I would have been unable to plant the charge had I desired 
to do so. 



On December 23 or 24 I took a trolley trip around the 
vicinity of Los Angeles and was photographed with the 
rest of the sightseers at San Gabriel mission. On De- 
cember 24 I located the Llewellyn Iron Works and the 
Baker Iron Works. I saw there was no chance for an ex- 
plosion at the latter place on account of lights and guards. 

At the Llewellyn works I entered the building and found 
a night shift working. I decided that death would result 
from a blast placed inside the building and was upon the 
point of withdrawing when a watchman appeared near 
me. I hid beside a pile of material and he walked by me 
so close that I could have touched him. I then got out- 
side, placed the glycerine against the wall of the building, 
set the clock for 2 a. m. Christmas day, and caught a train 
at 9:20 p. m. for San Francisco. I never located the hall 
of records or the Alexandria annex. 

I registered as Ed Todd at the Argonaut hotel in San 
Francisco and on Tuesday, Dec. 27, met E. A. Clancy at 
the labor temple. I asked him if he had heard of the 
latest explosion in Los Angeles and, before he knew who 
I was, told me that he had been expecting it. We dis- 
cussed the labor situation and I left San Francisco on 
December 28, arriving in Chicago on New Year's day. 
I remained there until January 15, when J. J. called me 
to Indianapolis and scolded because there had been but 
one explosion at Los Angeles and but little damage done. 
I told him he was lucky to have had an explosion there 
at all. 

We had no explosives left and it was therefore now nec- 
essary to lay in a new supply. J. B. suggested that we 
get back to dynamite as being easier to handle and also 
because, having had so much glycerine stolen, the use of 
dynamite would suggest to whoever was watching us that 

81 



two gangs were operating. Accordingly I tried to buy 
some nitro gelatine from the Independent Torpedo Com- 
pany at Findlay, O., but they did not make it. I then 
went to Bloomville, broke into the magazine at France's 
quarry and stole six 50-pound cases of sixty per cent dyna- 
mite, and forty loose sticks. These I stored in a building 
on my father's abandoned stone quarry at Tiffin, O. I 
then returned to Indianapolis, putting up at the Stubbins 
house as Ed. Todd. On Monday, January 23, J. B. and 
I went to the farm of Ed. Jones, near Indianapolis, intro- 
duced ourselves as J. W. McGraw and Frank Sullivan 
and arranged to use his barn as a storage house. We did 
not tell him what we w r anted to store, but I have never 
had any doubt that he knew. We put a piano box in the 
barn and then went to Tiffin and transported the stolen 
dynamite to the farm. 

On January 31 we went back to Tiffin, hired a wagon 
and hauled fourteen cases of dynamite from France's mag- 
azine and stored this in my father's quarry. Later we ar- 
ranged with my father to use the shed in the quarry "to 
store some tools," I introducing J. B. as my employer. 
A policeman lived across the street from the shed and my 
father, perfectly innocent of what we were about, asked 
the policeman to keep an eye on the shed to see that no 
one stole the "tools." 

On February 111 became ill and went to Chicago, where 
J. B. joined me on February 19. J. J. wanted us to look 
over the plant of the Iroquois Iron Works in South Chi- 
cago with a view to blowing it. Ed. Francis, former busi- 
ness agent of the Chicago local, had offered to blow down 
the cupola of this plant for $500. He was suspected of 
being a spy for the Wisconsin Bridge Company and got 
no encouragement. The local referred the matter to Hock- 

82 



in, who offered to place four blasts for $300 and expenses. 
J. B. and I looked the place over and agreed to do the 
work. It was apparently the easiest job we had encoun- 
tered. There were no watchmen, the lighting system was 
poor and we saw at once that we would have no trouble 
in placing the blasts wherever we wanted them. 

We arrived in Indianapolis on February 20, got 80 sticks 
of dynamite from Jones' barn and orders from J. J. to 
blow the plant on Tuesday night, while all the officers 
of the local No. 1 at Chicago were attending the regular 
meeting of the union, as this wouid furnish them with an 
alibi. 

We arrived in Chicago that evening with two suit cases 
filled with frozen dynamite. This we put near the furnace 
in the basement of my house to thaw but it did not and 
the following morning we put it on top of the radiator 
in our living room, where it set all day without thawing. 
While it was still on the radiator we went to the plant 
to get our bearings and then encountered trouble. 

The place swarmed with watchmen who were wide awake 
and walking about the yard constantly. The yard was 
better lighted than it had been and there were other in- 
dications that the company had been warned of our com- 
ing and were looking for us. I refused to go into the yard. 

The next day we looked it over by daylight and found 
many signs of watchfulness even then. We returned to 
my home and found the dynamite still frozen. We then 
decided to do the work on Thursday but on that day I 
got a terrific headache from handling the dynamite, in try- 
ing to thaw it, and could not go out. In the evening J. B., 
myself, my wife and Mrs. Sadie McGuire, wife of "South" 
McGuire, a bridgeman who lived near us, went to a theater. 
The McGuires were ignorant of the plot. I learned after- 

83 



ward that Malcom MacLaren, then a Burns detective and 
now chief of detectives for J. D. Fredericks, district attor- 
ney of Los Angeles county, occupied a seat just behind 
me, and had had us spotted for days. 

In the afternoon of Friday, February 24, J. B. and I 
took the dynamite out to South Chicago and spent an hour 
trying to get into the works. We simply could not do it. 
I wanted to throw the dynamite away, but finally w r e set 
sixty sticks in one charge and twenty in another along 
the fence on the outside. We were at home when they 
went off. The damage was slight. 

On March 1 I went to Indianapolis with J. B. on a call 
from J. J. and registered at the Stubbins hotel as Charles 
Fisher. I then got the final order to blow up the coal 
unloader of the Milwaukee Western Fuel Company, the 
work which I had twice visited on inspection trips. J. B. 
was to go to French Lick and blow up an addition being 
built for the French Lick hotel. His explosion was suc- 
cessful and the next day the job was unionized. 

I took forty sticks of dynamite and reached Milwaukee 
on March 15, 1911, registering at the Atlas hotel as G. 
Watson. The next day I retrieved 6 quarts of glycerine 
I had buried near the storage houses of the Wisconsin 
Ice Company and that night set the shots. I put four 
quarts of glycerine and twenty sticks of dynamite in the 
legs at one end of the unloader and the rest of the ex- 
plosives at the other end. I set the clocks at 7 p. m. to 
go off at 11 p. m. and was in Chicago an hour before the 
explosion, which totally wrecked the unloader with a loss 
of $150,000 and $10,000 damage to a vessel in the canal, 

I arrived in Indianapolis on March 18 and registered 
at the Stubbins as Charles Miller. 

"That's the kind of work to do," said J. J. gleefully as 

84 



I entered his office. "One or two more like that and we'll 
have them on the run." 

Hockin was in the office at the time and left while J. J. 
and I were talking. I did not see him again until October, 
1912, when he faced the bar of justice at Indianapolis. 

On J. J. McNamara's orders I left that night for Omaha 
to blow up the court house, then being constructed by 
Caldwell & Drake, taking forty sticks with me. J. B. was 
to go to the Caldwell & Drake shops at Columbus, Ind., 
and blow that plant. When I was ready at Omaha I was 
to telegraph to J. J., "Kindly forward $100 check to Lin- 
coln, Neb.," which would be a signal to J. B. and we would 
set the two explosions for the same minute. This- was 
J. J. McNamara's idea. He leaned toward the dramatic 
and thought it would have a better effect to have two 
plants of the same concern in widely separated places de- 
stroyed at the same time. 

I reached Omaha on March 21 and registered as G. 
Woods at the Murray hotel. On the morning of March 23 
I sent the telegram. I set two shots in the basement of 
the court house at 8 p. m. to explode at 4 a. m. and arrived 
in Indianapolis at 3 a. m. March 25, registering at the Stub- 
bins hotel as Frank Fisher. 

Both explosions were successful and caused a good deal 
of comment in the newspapers, and activity in the Erectors' 
Association and among Burns detectives, but on J. J.'s or- 
der I went immediately to Boston with forty sticks, hunt- 
ing for the municipal group of buildings at Springfield. 
I arrived at Springfield on the evening of March 30 and 
registered at the Henking house as William Lynch. I 
set the shot on the evening of April 3 in the tower, to 
take place at 2 a. m., April 4. I left Springfield at 8 p. m. 
and arrived at Utica, N. Y., at 2 a. m., registering at the 

85 



Baggs hotel as William Foster, at the very minute the ex- 
plosion took place in Springfield. I arrived at Indianapolis 
on April 7 at 3 a. m., bringing with me 45 sticks of dyna- 
mite from the Tiffin cache. As I was putting these sticks 
in the vault in the American Central Life building I saw 
a man peering at me from behind the elevator shaft. I 
told J. J. of this and said I thought it was a detective. J. J. 
laughed and reminded me of the proverb about a guilty 
conscience, but I was worried. 

J. J. wanted his brother and me to go to Detroit and 
look over a number of buildings there to see what we could 
do with them but my little son was sick and I went to 
Chicago, with an appointment to meet J. B. in Toledo on 
April 11. Before I left J. J. showed me a letter from 
Caldwell & Drake, whose work we had just "double shot- 
ted/' stating that they were beginning a reinforced con- 
crete job near Oklahoma City and that if McNamara con- 
sidered that as bridge work, they would be glad to unionize 
the job. 

"You see," he said, and smiled, "we've got the little 
ones and we'll get after the big ones hard." That was the 
last time I ever saw J. J. smile. 

J. B. laid out a plan to put a bomb in Detective W. J. 
Burns' desk, so arranged that the opening of the desk would 
explode a quart or two of glycerine. I said that it could 
not be done, that Burns' office must be too closely guarded 
and that, as it would kill, I would have nothing to do with 
it. At that time, I believe, J. B. simply wanted to kill; 
it made no difference whom. 

I arrived in Chicago on April 8, 1911. My boy was bet- 
ter. My family and Mrs. McGuire went down town that 
night and I bought a pair of shoes. I learned later that 
Detective MacLaren was in the store at the time. 

86 



In the afternoon of April 11, I left Chicago for Toledo, 
arriving there at 8:40 p. m. and met J. B. We registered 
at the Myershoff hotel, J. B. as Charles Caldwell and I 
as G. Foster. We had room 11, a strange string of coin- 
cidences; Room 11, April 11, 1911, the eve of our arrest. 
The next day we went to Detroit, arriving just before noon 
and registering at the Oxford hotel under the names we 
had used at Toledo. J. B. had in his handbag some fuse 
and caps and we checked our bags at the parcel room. 

The hotel was being renovated and we were not assigned 
to rooms. J. B. and I got a drink at the hotel bar and 
as we returned to the lobby a theater troup was registering. 
We started out of the front door to walk about when a. 
big man who proved to be Guy Biddinger, formerly ser- 
geant of police detectives in Chicago and now chief of the 
criminal bureau for the W. J. Burns Detective Agency, 
grabbed me and turned me around quickly. I then faced 
a man who held a revolver at my stomach. On the street 
J. B. was fighting desperately with two other men who 
quickly subdued him. Guests in the hotel started to in- 
terfere but Biddinger, who was in charge of the detectives. 
and who conducted the arrest along the only lines that 
could have made it successful, calmed them by telling them 
that his men were secret service agents and that w r e were 
wanted for safe blowing. That also calmed me for I saw 
an alibi. 

They took us direct to the Michigan Central depot, where 
a train was about to leave for Chicago. There J. B. yelled 
that he was being kidnapped and a uniformed policeman 
interfered. I heard the story Biddinger told him, and then 
I knew I had an alibi for I was buying that pair of shoes 
about the time he said the safe was blown. The result 
of the policeman's interference was that we were taken 

87 



to police headquarters where later in the day we signed 
extradition waivers and left that night for Chicago. I was 
booked at the station under my true name, J. B. as Frank 
Sullivan. 

The men who were with Biddinger were MacLaren, Ray- 
mond Burns and Police Detective Billy Reed of Chicago. 

I was put in an upper berth. J. B. sat on the lower 
berth after it was made up and, after questioning the 
detectives for some time, said : 

"I know what you want. You want to take me to Los 
Angeles and hang me. But I'll prove that the Times build- 
ing was blown up by gas." 

I reached my hand down and grabbed him by the hair. 

"Do you know what you're talking about," I said. 

He got up and strode down the aisle. 

"You're damn right I know what I'm talking about," 
he said. "You go to sleep." 

"I got the whole federation of labor behind me," he con- 
tinued, raving. 

He offered $5000 to be allowed to escape, or for my es- 
cape. Five thousand at a time, he raised his offer to $30,- 
000, but of course he made no impression. He told the 
detectives that if they did not get the $30,000 Clarence 
Darrow would. He then began to threaten the detectives 
with the vengeance of "the gang." It all amounted to noth- 
ing and we were taken from the train at South Chicago 
and by automobile to the home of Detective Billy Reed. 
There J. B. and I were placed, handcuffed together, in 
a room, with a detective. J. B. asked the latter to leave 
the room and let him talk to me privately. This was 
refused but the officer moved out of ear shot and I asked 
J. B. how we were going to stand on the thing. I now 
realized that we were up against it for fair and that it 

88 



was dynamiting and not safe blowing that we must answer 
for. J. B. said: 

"Every man for himself." 

"All right," I replied. "I'm done with you." I asked 
the officer to loosen me from J. B. and this was done and 
J. B. taken from the room. 

In the afternoon Detective Burns came to the house 
and talked with me. He advised me as to my rights, of- 
fered to get any lawyer I wanted and told me he could 
make no promises of immunity and that whatever I said 
would be used against me. 

"You can talk to me if you wish," he said, "and I'll 
listen. If you talk to a lawyer I'm done with you." 

"I want just one promise," I said. "Will you take care 
of my wife and children if I make a full confession?" 

He said that he would care for them as long as my wife 
stayed with me on the story. 

"Call in your stenographer," I said and I talked from 8 
o'clock in the evening until 4 in the morning. Without 
details of our work the confession covered thirty-six pages 
of typewriting and I swore to it before a notary. 

In charge of Police Captain Paul Flammer and Under- 
sheriff Robert Brain of Los Angeles, J. B. and I left Chi- 
cago for Los Angeles on April 22. On that day William J. 
Burns and his aide, Guy Biddinger, arrested J. J. McNa- 
mara at Indianapolis, taking him into custody as he sat in 
a meeting of the ironworkers' international executive board. 
He was placed aboard our train at Dodge City, Kas. We 
arrived at Pasadena, Cal., April 26, and were taken from 
there to Los Angeles by automobile. It was at Pasadena 
that I had my first experience with newspaper cameras. 
I had never even seen one, and there were twenty leveled 
at us as we got off the train. 

89 



On the morning of April 27 Attorney Job Harriman of 
Los Angeles, and Judge O. Hilton, of Denver, who was 
associated with Clarence Darrow in the Boise cases, called 
at the county jail to see me. I refused to talk with them. 
A few minutes later I was taken to see Captain J. D. Fred- 
ericks, district attorney for Los Angeles county. He ad- 
vised me as to my rights and said I could have a lawyer 
if I wished, or talk to him, but that if I talked to a lawyer 
he was done with me. I told him I had confessed and 
could prove the truth of my confession. 

He had in a room with him the suit case which J. B. 
had described to me as the one he had told Caplin to 
get from the San Francisco ferry building parcel room. 
He started to open it and I stopped him. 

"I'll prove some of it now," I said. I then told him he 
would find in the suit case a Schmidt infernal machine, some 
fuse and three copies of the San Francisco Bulletin, dated 
October 1, 2 and 3, 1910. He opened the case and I was 
correct. He then asked me if I was a Burns detective. 

During the next few weeks I furnished the information 
by which the evidence in the national dynamite plot was 
collected and which was so strong that thirty-eight labor 
leaders, scattered from Boston to San Francisco, were con- 
victed of conspiracy at the Indianapolis trial. More than 
500 witnesses and thousands of pieces of documentary and 
other physical evidence corroborated my story. 

Such are the facts of the greatest plot to destroy that this 
country has ever seen. It has been called a "frame-up" 
and I have been called a lying spy and traitor. When the 
arrests were made labor throughout the country was told 
that the McNamaras were not guilty and that they were 
victims of a Burns conspiracy to advertise a detective 
agency and to destroy labor unions. On the strength of 

90 



this they collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from 
working men all over the country, who believed in their 
innocence. And then they stood in court and pleaded 
guilty. 

Even then labor was not convinced. Some said Darrow 
had sold out. Darrow was tried for bribery. Some said 
this was a part of his agreement with the district attorney. 
The public is indeed hard to convince. 

Upon the heels of the Darrow trial came the Indianapolis 
trial of fifty-two defendants, thirty-eight of whom were 
convicted. Then labor began to think that perhaps after 
all there might be something in McManigal's story. Un- 
fortunately, complete reports of the Indianapolis trial were 
not published throughout the country. It is my hope that 
the circulation of my own story will rectify this and place 
before labor in every city and village of the United States, 
the real facts concerning this plot. 

I have already expressed my sentiments regarding the 
work that was done. It was crime and not war, and it 
was useless and could have served no good purpose, had 
every charge we set done the work hoped for and had we 
been left unmolested, to carry out our work unto the end 
of time. Labor in the mass must realize this ; must purge 
itself of leaders whose propaganda is of violence, and se- 
cure the services of men for leaders who will secure their 
ends by legislation and diplomacy and not by crime and 
violence. 



91 




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